"Dale Brown never will forget the day in 1985, the day Shaquille O'Neal walked into the life of the man coaching basketball at LSU.

"He was carrying a duffle bag," Brown recalled. "He was wearing a white polo shirt, khaki pants, tennis shoes. I'm winding up a European tour, giving clinics, and I couldn't wait to get back to Baton Rouge. I'm at an Army base in West Germany, in a city named Wildflecken, and I find myself looking up at a young man, about 6 feet 8, smiling down at me."

Not only that. He's also wearing what Brown later learned was a size 17 shoe. The coach realized the young man's growing days were far from over.

"How long you been in the service, son?" Brown asked.

"I'm too young for the service, sir," came the reply. "I'm only 13."

This was almost too much.

It was enough to strike speechless, at least for a few seconds, a basketball ambassador already famous for some non-stop homilies, in the company of some future slam-dunk dynamo.

"So you're 13," said the coach. "I'd sure like to meet your dad."

Moments later, he did. He was shaking hands with a man named Phillip Harrison, a convert to Islam, someone Brown would call "The Sergeant," who oversaw a family of four - two sons, two daughters.

"The Sergeant" was a 6-5, 280-pound drill instructor from Newark, N.J., who played junior college basketball, joined the Army, was posted overseas and settled the family in San Antonio, where Shaquille (Arabic for "little one") Rashaun ("warrior") O'Neal (maiden name of his mother Lucille) wound up as schoolboy superstar at Cole High."