November 11, 2011

My Father Beat Me, Shaq Writes in Book: In a new book written with Jackie MacMullen, Shaquille O'Neal writes about enduring a childhood of physical abuse from his father, Phillip Harrison, a Army staff sergeant. "Physically abused him, beat the living daylights out of him at every turn," MacMullen said. "His father came home from work one night, Shaq is sitting there, he punches Shaq in the face. Shaq says, 'Well, what's that for?' [Harrison] said, 'We're going to see this guy play basketball. ... He plays in the NBA. You're messing around, you're goofing around, you're not serious about your game. This guy makes $15 million and he can't play at all. And we're going to go see him.' Punches him again and takes him to go see Jon Koncak play basketball and says, 'See, if you applied yourself, you could be in the NBA making $15 million.'"

posted by rcade to basketball at 09:41 AM - 2 comments