UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, October 10, 1996
5B
Shaquille O'Neal badmouths Orlando
Player wants more attention, goes to Lakers
By JIM LITKE AP sportswriter
Most people who leave town with too little accomplished and too much of someone else's money know enough to keep it to themselves. So mark this down as yet another way in which Shauille O'Neal is unusual.
Allsports Photo
With the NBA season less than a month away, the media spotlight will be on Los Angeles' newest celebrity, high priced Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal.
He ran.
he couldn't resist rubbing it in
He took
seven-year, $121 million contract.
If the past turns out to be prologue,
what they will get for that sum is a
little heartache and a lot of regrets.
He couldn't resist rubbing it in. "I'm just glad to be playing now for people who know the game and know the business," he said earlier this week in the Los Angeles Times.
At least that's how it worked out for Orlando Magic. Their money lavished on O'Neal through four seasons didn't buy loyalty, appreciation or an NBA championship. Even worse, it didn't even guarantee his silence.
Not the part about O'Neal being glad to play for the Lakers, of course, but the second part. That bit about the organization being so well-informed. Two months ago, Los Angeles signed O'Neal to a
NBA training camps just opened and the start of the season is still a month away, so it will be some time before the truth of that statement is known.
with O'Neal in Orlando, with results somewhere in between.
The Magic drafted O'Neal in 1992, gave him the keys to the house and let him do everything pretty much his wav.
The team ran the offense he wanted, surrounded him with the players he wanted, let him run off to attend to side businesses when he wanted, renegotiated his contract when he demanded and pretty much saw to it that Shaq was among the most-contented players in the league.
Orlando made it to the playoffs for the first time in 1994, only to be swept out of the first round by Indiana. In 1995, the Magic made the finals, only to be swept by Houston. Earlier this spring, the team made the conference finals against the Bulls, but did their customary four-and-out swoon.
Because it is a five-man game, basketball is one sport where an impact player is just that — both immediately and for a long time. Therefore, teams where the tail appears to be wagging the dog are the rule and not the exception. It happens in towns where management is shrewd — think Michael Jordan in Chicago — and in towns where management is clueless — think everywhere Derrick Coleman has been. And it happened
Nothing unusual there.
Not long after that, the bidding war with Los Angeles began. It was supposed to have ended when O'Neal passed up Orlando's last offer for $115 million. But then Magic general manager John Gabriel gave a speech somewhere and did some sniping at O'Neal. It struck a nerve the organization had been searching for since drafting Shaq; he responded with a ferocity he never showed in the fourth quarter of plavoff games.
"I can remember days growing up when I didn't have anything. I didn't have sneakers, I didn't have shorts, nothing. But I played. The money is there. It's great, don't get me wrong. But it was the best offer because of the players surrounding me, the staff, the organization."
"Money isn't everything. I don't play for money," he said, which is what ballplayers always say but almost never mean.
O'Neal then knocked his old teammates, singling out Nick
Anderson, for wanting the ball too often, and his former coach, Brian Hill, for encouraging that kind of play. It's called teamwork, although Shaq could not bring himself to pronounce the word in four seasons there.
"I used to go in the locker room and get on guys, and he would say, 'Don't do that. You're gonna hurt his feelings.'" I said, 'Look, man, this is the professionals, bro. You're the coach. They've got to do what you say. If they don't do what you say, there's two places they can go — either the bench or to a new team. Period."
There it is, whether you wanted to know what caused the breakup or not. Magic team president Bob Vander Wiede said in a statement Tuesday night that his organization would "not respond to any further comment that Shaq might choose to make about his past with us."
But at least now we can guess. It wasn't just the money in LA. Nor was it a desire to advance his acting-rapping-writing-clothes-designing careers with less travel.
No, in the end, it was because no one in Orlando was listening to him. Imagine that.
Hockey teams take odd nicknames
Organizations choose names inspired by songs festivals, wildlife
The Associated Press
TORONTO — A generation later, the lyrics of Jim Morrison and the Doors are part of hockey.
"I am the Lizard King. I can do anything," Morrison exhorted in the 1960s in The Celebration of the Lizard.
Larry Lane loves the Doors. When he began searching for a name for his East Coast Hockey League team, Morrison's lyrics came to mind. Hence the Jacksonville Lizard Kings, a perfect fit given Florida's wildlife.
Another singer has her place in hockey. Thanks to Doris Day and her decades-old Makin' Whoopee recording, Georgia has the Macon Whoopee. The Central Hockey League team's logo depicts a fig leaf from plants of the region.
It does not end with Lizard Kings and Whopee. Odd nicknames in minor league hockey are springing up wherever teams skate: Mysticks, Nailers, Mallards, Cottonmouths, Channel Cats and Ice Bats.
The Mystics Society is tied to the Mardi Gras festival. Add the letter K, and you've got Alabama's east coast-league Mobile Mysticks, who use Mardi Gras colors of purple, gold and green as team colors. The logo is a dragon grasping a hockey stick.
The east coast league's Wheeling Nailers are named because the West Virginia city is home to one of the oldest cut nail manufacturing
plants in the world. Workers are called nailers, and Wheeling is known as the Nail City The jersey logo features a medieval mask with two nails crossed behind it.
The Quad City Mallards of the Colonial Hockey League play out of Moline, Ill. The arena is on the Mississippi River, where mallard ducks frolic a few steps from the arena's back door.
The league's Columbus, Ga., team uses Cottonmouths as a nickname after poisonous water snakes. The logo features an attacking snake's head with two fangs.
The Huntsville, Ala., team of the Colonial League uses Channel Cats, after a kind of catfish found in the Tennessee River. A mean-looking catfish is depicted on the jerseys.
The Western Professional Hockey League hasn't been around long, but it's doing fine in the name game with Texas teams like the
Austin Ice Bats, Waco Wizards and El Paso Buzzards.
Austin owners were going to use Outlaws, but a Houston cycling team had a state trademark. Team officials, staying in a hotel near the Colorado River, went jogging and saw bats swooping under bridges. Turns out a huge colony of bats wings in from Mexico every year. Citizens stroll the riverbanks at dusk watching bats.
"We thought, 'If we can't use Outlaws, let's do bats,'" a team representative said.
In the International Hockey League, there's the Orlando Solar Bears. Their logo features a polar bear in sunglasses holding a hockey stick, with palm trees and a setting sun in the background.
The West Coast Hockey League has its Bakersfield Fog, which plays out of a misty California valley.
The league's Quebec Rafales, which translates to blizzard-level winds, adopts an abominable snowman as its centerpiece.
Nicknames and logos can mean big business. The moose on the international league's Minnesota Moose jerseys led to great sales. So when the team shifted to Winnipeg last summer, the team became the Manitoba Moose to retain the commercial appeal.
The Milwaukee Admirals were established 25 years ago by an appliance dealer for the Admiral company. The team logo, however, is a skating seafarer.
The league's Fort Wayne Komets misspell their nickname. An original 1952 owner wanted a name to express speed and excitement. He thought of comets. His wife's name was Kathryn, so he spelled the team's nickname with a K.
Hey, it could have been a refrigerator.
NCAA to look at UCLA program
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — UCLA's basketball program is being investigated following a published report that a car owned by coach Jim Harick was sold to a woman two days after her brother verbally committed to play for the Bruins.
UCLA athletic director Peter Dalis told the Los Angeles Times that although the car was registered to Harrick, it was Harrick's son Glenn who sold the car to Lisa Hodhon on Sept. 20.
The transaction is a possible NCAA violation. NCAA rules prohibit financial aid or other benefits to the recruit or the recruit's relatives or friends by any "institution's staff member or any representative of its athletics interests."
"The UCLA Athletic Department and the Pacific-10 Conference are jointly investigating the Bruins men's basketball program after allegations were brought to our attention by the Los Angeles Times," Dalis said in a statement issued on Tuesday. "Until the conclusion of the investigation process, there will be no further (comments) from the University."
Baron Davis, Hodoh's younger brother, is a 6-foot-1 point guard who recently began his senior year at Santa Monica Crossroads High School. He was considered one of the top 30 prep players in the country, but after a strong performance at the Nike Camp in July, he was rated the top prep point guard in the nation and a top-10 prospect.
In addition to UCLA, Davis was considering Duke and Kansas but canceled visits to both schools when he committed to the Bruins.
Department of Motor Vehicles records show Harrick bought the car, a black 1991 Chevy Blazer, in December 1990, and he had 112,960 miles the day Godhod it bought it.
Dalis and Hodoh said the vehicle was sold for $5,000, but the Kelley Blue Book lists the retail value of that model of the car, factoring out mileage, at $12,750.
According to DMV procedure, the registered owner must sign over the title.
UCLA was eliminated in the first round of the NCAA tournament by Princeton last March. The previous spring, the Bruins won their first NCAA championship in 20 years.
REGISTER TO WIN TWO TICKETS TO THE KU vs. TEXAS TECH GAME
today's question
"What would you do if you could be invisible for a day?"
Call Mojo's Today
841-1313
805 Vermont
Learn to Fly
Lawrence Air Services
Instruction+Charter
Service*Rental
842-0000
Sprint Personal Communication Services™ (Sprint PCS) is taking bold strides into the 21st century as the creative force behind the evolution of wireless communications services. We have immediate openings at our Kansas City corporate headquarters for:
PART-TIME INTERNS WHO WILL WORK AS CONTRACTORS
The first part-time internship position will require research skills and content knowledge to participate in exciting projects in telecommunications. Responsibilities include assisting in literature reviews, product research and product evaluation. Qualified candidates will have a Master's degree in a behavioral or cognitive science, such as psychology, speech science, linguistics, industrial engineering or human factors. Course work and experience in experimental design, qualitative research, assessment, data analysis and/or marketing is desirable. A working knowledge of the Internet is a plus.
The second part-time internship position will aid in the design and evaluation of user-Interfaces to telephony features. Responsibilities include analyzing the product consumption process, performing detailed task analysis and developing concept prototypes. Qualified candidates will have a degree in computer science or a behavioral science. Applicants with programming skills, user-Interface design skills and knowledge of prototype development and tools (e.g. Visual Basic, Director) is a plus.
Students who are working towards an advanced degree are encouraged to apply.
Sprint PCS offers an outstanding compensation package. If your career goals are challenge and exploration, then Sprint PCS invites you to share the future with us. Send your resume to: Sprint PCS, Attn: Human Resources, Mallistop MOKCMM0701, Dept. ST/CO, P.O. Box 32547, Kansas City, MO 64171. We are proud to be an EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V. Also, we maintain a drug-free workplace and perform pre-employment substance abuse testing.
Sprint PCS"