If you want to remember the young, almost skinny Shaquille O’Neal, you need to head on down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Sure, you could also go to YouTube, but Baton Rouge is a lot more fun.)
On the LSU campus Thursday they unveiled a new statue of Shaq — dunking of course — from his days as a Tiger. Back when he was thin, agile and just starting to dominate.
This is not Shaq pretending to be a statue in Boston, this is an actual statue. And while Shaq put on a few pounds as his career went on, he never got up to the 900 pounds the statue weighs. Probably.
Shaq, of course, accepted the statue with his usual subtle grace (via the LSU basketball twitter feed).
Shaq nicknamed the statue “The Big Bronze.”
Shaq also told the crowd he was disappointed he could not bring a national title to Baton Rouge and that calling coach Dale Brown with the news he was going pro and not returning to LSU was one of the hardest things he has ever done.
