Late in the summer of 1996, I headed up to Loyola Marymount University to workout with Shaquille O’Neal for the first time. I’d just been drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, and the idea was for me to get to know Shaq a little bit since we were going to be playing together.
One of the coaches — it might have been our head coach at the time, Del Harris — took me up to the LMU gym. This was before the era of big practice facilities and Taj Mahal gyms that every NBA team pretty much has now.