What we learned about the 1995 Orlando Magic from “Blue Chips” oral history
Shaquille O’Neal does not take no for an answer
"Shaquille O’Neal: When I was in college, my professor said, “I hope you save all your money because you can’t get endorsements. Big guys won’t sell.” We had a marketing [project]. He wanted us to create a product and sell them in class, so I brought in a Shaq shoe. I had a shoe and I had my Dunkman emblem on it. I had it like superglued on and I had a little B.S. commercial shot. He gave me a D. He said that ain’t going to work — that’s what he told me in front of the class. My mentality was all built off of criticism, proving other people wrong. That’s why I am who I am."
The going thought around the league is that big men do not sell.
Fans do not relate to them because, quite simply, most of us will never be 7-foot-1 behemoths who can just physically dominate the paint. It is a lot more fun to try crossovers and jump shots rather than post moves and dunks. It takes a finer craft.
O’Neal really changed that by taking control of his own brand. That design he slapped on that shoe became his logo and his brand. O’Neal’s Shaq-nosis shoe is one of the best selling shoes of all time and one of the best-looking shoes of all time. And O’Neal has tons of marketing ventures that he is still involved in (some more ridiculous than the last).
He turned himself into a marketing genius. A unique thing among big men.
O’Neal, for some reason, has always played with a chip on his shoulder. He has always taken slights from the media or otherwise and taken them to seeming extremes.
Those early 90s Magic teams were a marketing bonanza. Anfernee Hardaway and O’Neal were running the two hottest shoe commercial campaigns in the league at the time. Some professional jealousy might have derailed things by the time 1996 came around.
No doubt though Shaq could sell, and he knew it, bucking the age-old adage and proving one professor wrong.
Next: The team was super close, and connected by the chain of lakes