Discovering Shaq
Dale Brown
I grew up without a dad, so poor that my shoes had holes in them and that my mom, with only an eighth-grade education, had to work two jobs to support us. Sports, and the mentors who encouraged me through sports, let me see my potential and saved my life. So, throughout my forty-four-year coaching career I’ve had one driving motivation that was even more important than winning games: to be that kind of mentor for other young men.
It was that strong sense of purpose that drove me one day in the mid-‘80s when, as the head coach at LSU, I was asked to speak to U.S. troops on a tour of German military bases. I had finished my talk at my last stop, a remote mountain base in a town called Wildflecken. A young man approached me, a young man whose physical appearance I will never forget. At 6-foot-9 and 250 pounds, he told me that he was trying to become a stronger and better athlete, but he didn’t have access to any weight training facilities, and he asked me for some exercises.
I showed him a few things, and then I asked, “How long have you been in the service?” He smiled, looked around and he cupped his hand over his mouth and said, "Coach Brown, I'm not in the service! I'm only 13 years old!" It turned out his stepfather was a career military man and the family was stationed there. Amazed, I asked him his shoe size (17) and told him I would send him our LSU weight training program when I returned to the U.S. As soon as I returned to Baton Rouge, I mailed him our plan, and a few months later my secretary found me as I was heading to practice and gave me a letter from my new young friend, Shaquille O’Neal.
He was discouraged. He wrote that he had tried the exercises I recommended, but his coach had still cut him from the high school team in Germany. The coach told Shaquille that he was too slow and clumsy, and his feet were too big. He advised him to consider becoming a soccer goalie instead. After practice that day, I returned to my office, grabbed a pen and considered how I should reply. I remembered my own chief mentors: my mom, my high school coach and principal who was the first man to say he loved me, and legendary coach John Wooden, who took me under his wing to teach me the principles of leadership, character and coaching. I told Shaquille that I had faced plenty of obstacles myself when I was younger, but I had leaned on the belief that if I worked as hard as I possibly could, God would take care of the rest. I encouraged him to believe in himself.
Just a few years ago, I learned that shortly after I mailed that letter Shaquille had been trudging through the snow to the mailbox, resolving to himself to quit basketball and pursue a military career. But he received my letter that day, and after he read it, he promised himself that he was going to stick with basketball. The rest, of course, is history, but that story encapsulates my conviction that coaches and other mentors have a God-given responsibility toward the young people they encounter.
Even today at the age of 85, when I have the opportunity to give speeches and as I continue to mentor former players who reach out, I’m determined to return what sports gave to me. My involvement in sports transformed my self-image, gave me discipline, taught me the value of teamwork and allowed me, a poor kid from North Dakota, to get an education and have a career that I loved.
My favorite story about Shaq is about the time an Indianapolis mother called me and told me her nine-year-old son had a brain tumor and Shaq was her hero. He was in town as a star for the Lakers, playing the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals. I reached out to Shaq and asked him if could give the little boy a call, aware that his schedule was crazy. He didn’t call the boy at all; instead he drove to the hospital and spent an hour and a half singing to him, telling him jokes, and praying with him. Shaq was an amazing player, but his heart and his benevolence has always been greater than his basketball contribution. I’m so grateful that I had a role in starting his career, both on that German military base and then through his storied career on my team at LSU.