[I’ve] never met an athlete so comfortable in his own skin, in being the person Whoever created him to be. Anyone who follows basketball is familiar with The Unhappiness of the Bigs. They are grumpy. They’d rather be anywhere else, as long as it was at a lower personal altitude than the one with which they’d been cursed. They’d all rather be two-guards. (See “Sampson, Ralph” for details.) This was not the case with Shaquille O’Neal. He revelled in who he was. He had an instinctive sense for the limits of the absurdity that is the professional athlete’s life. “They’re gonna make a cartoon out of you anyway,” he once told me. “The important thing is to make sure you control the cartoons.” The barstools in the Unfulfilled Potential Lounge are full of people who lost control of their cartoons. He never did.
