Every so often, even a quarter-century after the fact, someone will invariably send an email, leave a voicemail or dispatch a tweet blaming me for running Shaquille O’Neal out of town by masterminding the infamous Orlando Sentinel poll.
Of course, I wasn’t even at the Orlando Sentinel at the time and wouldn’t arrive until four years after Shaq had bolted for L.A., but when it comes to the Sentinel’s Shaq poll, the facts have become fuzzy over the years. There are still many longtime Magic fans, team executives and former players who blame the Sentinel for Shaq’s departure and the resulting transformation of the Magic from one of the hottest, hippest organizations in all of pro sports to their current status as an outpost of NBA obscurity.
A new book written by New York Times bestselling author Jeff Pearlman only perpetuates the mythology of the Sentinel poll. The book — titled “Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty” — is a fascinating, well-reported look at how the Shaq-Kobe Lakers came together, but I take umbrage with Pearlman’s portrayal of Orlando as a city and the Sentinel poll’s role in Shaq’s exit.
In part of the book, Pearlman wrote that Shaq’s departure was due, in part, because Orlando was a “charmless, in-the-middle-of-nowhere city that was home to Disney World and 12,471 strip malls.” He also wrote that “Orlando is a fairly right-wing corner of America, where the N-word (at least in the mid-1990s) was thrown around far too regularly.”
I have been visiting Orlando since I was kid and have lived here full-time since 2000, and I’ve never once heard anybody throw out the N-word on a regular or irregular basis. Yes, there are closet racists in Orlando just as there are in every city in America. The fact is, Orlando has two Democratic mayors — city mayor Buddy Dyer and Orange County mayor Jerry Demings — is one of the most inclusive and ethnically diverse cities in America. We are home to the fastest growing Puerto Rican community in the country and more than 25% of our population is Black, compared to the national average of 13%. We have a large and vibrant LGBTQ population and are considered among the most open-minded, tolerant cities in America.
If Shaq really thought Orlando was such a redneck, racist city, then why did he continue to live here in the offseason for decades after he left the Magic? And why have so many other Black athletes and coaches (see Tiger Woods, Ken Griffey Jr., Grant Hill, Oscar Robertson, Doc Rivers and dozens and dozens of others) lived here and continue to move here over the years?
As far as Orlando being a charmless, middle-of-nowhere city, the facts certainly don’t back that up either. From 2018 to 2019, Orlando was growing faster than all but one of the 30 largest metropolitan areas in America. And that doesn’t even count our tourism industry. If we’re so charmless, then why are we among the most visited cities on the planet with millions of tourists and conventioneers from all over the world annually coming here to have fun?
OK, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about the Sentinel poll, which came in the aftermath of Magic owner Rich DeVos and team management making the monumental blunder of lowballing Shaq with an opening offer of $54 million before the free agency period began in the summer of ’96.
As Pearlman wrote in the book, “The official NBA free agency period opened on July 9, 1996, and the Lakers wasted no time. The franchise presented O’Neal with a seven-year, $95.5 million package with an out clause after the third season. … The Magic — threatened, bewildered, panicked, caught off guard — fired back with a $100 million deal, a pathetic offer that infuriated the star. When that backfired, DeVos tried to right the ship by putting forth a contract that would pay $115 million over seven years.”
Pearlman went on to describe the genesis of the Sentinel poll: “On the morning of July 16, 1996, readers of the Orlando Sentinel, the city’s daily newspaper of record, were greeted by a front-page poll question: Is Shaquille O’Neal worth $115 million over 7 seasons? The ineloquently phrased inquiry was the brainchild of Lynn Hoppes, an editor at the paper who wanted to engage readers in what was an increasingly heated debate throughout Central Florida. In the pre-Internet world of polling, consumers were asked to call 420-5022 to vote yes, 420-5044 to vote no.
“When polling closed, 91.3% of 5,111 participants voted no — Shaquille O’Neal was not deserving of $115 million for seven years.”
Hoppes, who is now out of the journalism business, explained to me recently the Sentinel sports department back in the days before social media did phone-in polls on many hot-button issues. What made this particular poll different, Hoppes said, was that the news department commandeered it. Because Shaq was such a megastar, the poll and the resulting article didn’t run in the Sentinel sports section but on the front page of the entire newspaper.
“I think that skewed the perception of the poll and the vote,” Hoppes said a few days ago. “A lot of people who read the front page of the newspaper look down on sports and don’t think sports is important. It’s a completely different audience than those who turn to the sports page.”
However, Brian Schmitz, a Sentinel sports columnist at the time, said the placement of the poll didn’t matter as much as the question. “It was just a stupid sound-off poll,” Schmitz says now. “I knew what the results were going to be before the results even came in. It didn’t matter that it was Shaq. Back then, and even now, if you ask somebody if an athlete deserves $100 or $115 million, the answer is going to be NO!”
But there’s no question, the timing of the poll couldn’t have been worse. As it turns out, the U.S. Olympic basketball team was training out at Disney when the poll came out and Shaq’s Olympic teammates teased him relentlessly. As Pearlman wrote, Charles Barkley refused to hold back and told Shaq: “You bring glory to this redneck, one-horse town, and this is what they think of you? Get out as soon as you can. Bleep these people.”
Dennis Scott, Shaq’s teammate and best friend on the team, says in the book: “That poll was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
I’m not going to say the poll had no bearing on Shaq’s decision to leave, but I don’t believe it was a major factor at all. There was no newspaper poll when Wilt Chamberlain left the Philadelphia 76ers for the Lakers back in the 1960s. There was no newspaper poll when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar left the Milwaukee Bucks for the Lakers in the 1970s. There was no newspaper poll when LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers [the second time] for the Lakers in 2018.
For generations, NBA superstars have been attracted to the Hollywood lifestyle and the marketing opportunities of playing for the storied Lakers. Pearlman chronicles numerous examples of what Orlandoans have known since the day Shaq was drafted: That his L.A.-based agent Leonard Armato wanted Shaq on the Lakers from Day 1.
Magic co-founder and team executive Pat Williams once told me that on the day Orlando won the Shaq lottery back in 1992 that Armato urged the Magic to trade the pick to the Lakers.
Recalls Williams: “Leonard was whispering in my ear the day we won the lottery, ‘Why don’t you make a deal with the Lakers?’ He [Armato] wouldn’t even let Shaq come here for a visit until two days before the draft. There was always the pull for Shaq to end up in L.A.”
On the day Shaq retired from the NBA in 2011, I got a chance to visit his Isleworth mansion and ask him why he really left the Magic all those years ago. Was it actually the Sentinel poll? Was it the Magic’s initial lowball offer that insulted him? Or was it simply because he wanted to play for the Lakers and be a big star in a big city?
“Fifty percent of it was that I was selfish. I had a lot of stuff going on ... movies and albums ... that I couldn’t pass up,” Shaq said then. “Forty percent of it was the Sentinel poll and the fact that I was very sensitive at a young age. Ten percent of it was that Bob [Magic president Bob Vander Weide] and the organization didn’t move quickly enough [on offering him a massive contract].”
It should be noted that Shaq’s arbitrary percentages have changed over the years, but I believe the percentages are much more definitive.
I believe the Sentinel Poll was a 100% excuse.
An excuse used by the Magic for their botched, bungled negotiations.
An excuse used by Shaq, who wanted to be in L.A. all along.
By the way, I have a follow-up Sentinel poll question:
For the 91.3% of those who voted that Shaq wasn’t worth $115 million in 1996, how stupid do you feel a quarter-century later?
