Don Williams column: Back when Shaq was speechless

Before the Texas High School Coaches Association discontinued its football and basketball all-star games in conjunction with its annual coaching school, that used to be a regular summer assignment for a member of the A-J sports staff.

Those trips mostly run together in the memory bank, but not the one from 1989. 

The paper sent me to the Metroplex to cover the games, ostensibly to highlight the South Plains guys playing for the North All-Stars. Having nailed down that angle for the basketball game preview, being young and industrious, I headed over to the practice site of the South hoops team to gather additional intel. 

The most ballyhooed player in the state that year was a 7-foot center, one I assumed was a skinny 220-pound kid who, for all his talent, needed to fill out in a college program. Aren't all 7-footers at age 17 skinny guys who still need to fill out?

Being a regular Frank Drebin, I picked him out right away, no assistance required. When the South's final workout ended, I ambled over to have a few words with the kid.

Which is exactly what I got. Darn few.

There's a tenet journalism: Don't phrase a question in a way that might elicit only a yes-or-no answer, because the interview subject might settle for that. 

Perhaps I was a poor interviewer. Perhaps I petrified the young man. So little was said, the answers so short, there's no reason I'd remember that brief encounter from 32 years ago except for the subject: The kid's name was Shaquille O'Neal.

He'd led San Antonio Cole to the state championship, he was headed off to LSU. What followed was a 19-year NBA career that included being a 15-time All-Star, a four-time NBA champion, three-time All-Star Game MVP and three-time NBA Finals MVP. He was a slam-dunk inclusion in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. 

As I learned that week in Dallas, he was not a skinny 220-pound kid, even at 17. Seems like the game program listed him at 285, but the numbers didn't do him justice. He was 285 with bounce. You knew this was not your run-of-the-mill all-star for 1989, but the all-star for a generation.

Shaq was well on his way to being The Diesel.

The Big Aristotle, the glib NBA studio host, the larger-than-life personality, the pitch man on commercials, the rapper who recorded a stack of albums, a platinum seller even, all that came later.

He's coming to our town on Saturday, to be the featured performer at Raider Alley before Texas Tech's home opener against Stephen F. Austin.  I know zero about rap, but it's my understanding Shaq will spin tunes and perform and be the life of the party. And probably endear Red Raiders with that outsized personality seen alongside Ernie and Kenny and Sir Charles on TNT.

And I'll smile and remember one of my biggest failings as a sportswriter.

I couldn't get Shaq to say a thing.

Don Williams is a sports reporter for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. He can be reached at dwilliams@lubbockonline.com.