Shaquille O’Neal recalls Jerry West grabbed him by the neck after losing in 1998 WCF: “Have you ever heard of the term old man strength?”

O’Neal was destroying a locker room until West “came in like a gangster” and grabbed him by the neck.

The 1997–98 Los Angeles Lakers were supposed to be a team on the rise. With a 61–21 regular season record, the second-best in the Western Conference, they rolled into the playoffs with every intention of challenging for the crown.

But what came next sent the franchise crashing back to reality. In the Western Conference finals, the Utah Jazz – led by John Stockton and Karl Malone – swept the Lakers in four games.

For Shaquille O’Neal, it was another gutting playoff exit. His earlier years in the Orlando Magic had been littered with similar disappointments.

West’s old man’s strength

After Game 4, emotions boiled over. O’Neal stormed into the locker room, his frustration giving way to fury. Doors were kicked. Urinals, unhinged. He was 26, already the most physically dominant force in the league, and still couldn’t shake the postseason curse.

But then Jerry West happened.

“[West] came in there like a gangster,” O’Neal said. “What the hell are you doing? He just pin me up. Have you ever heard the term old man strength? He got that old man strength. I don’t know where he had it, but he just kind of brought it on me.”

Shaquille, then in his second year with the Lakers after arriving from the Magic in the summer of 1996, was the centerpiece of that hope. Alongside a budding 19-year-old Kobe Bryant and a cast of solid role players, the team had already proven its firepower by knocking off the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle SuperSonics in the first two rounds.

But they couldn’t get past the Jazz for the Lakers’ first Finals appearance since 1991. West, the team general manager and the architect behind bringing O’Neal to Los Angeles, had to step in to calm the giant.

O’Neal’s heartbreaks didn’t start in L.A. — they began in Orlando, where he transformed from a raw LSU phenom into a full-fledged NBA superstar. From 1993 to 1996, the product from Louisiana State University led the Magic to four consecutive playoff appearances. The highlight came in 1995 when his upstart Orlando squad stunned Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

However, they got swept in the Finals by a more seasoned Houston Rockets team led by Hakeem Olajuwon. O’Neal had a series of playoff flameouts that all piled onto a growing narrative that he couldn’t win when it mattered most. The next season, Orlando was wiped out by Chicago in the conference finals.

And just like that, O’Neal’s tenure with the franchise came to a bitter end.

His reality check

By the time Shaq landed in L.A., the losses had already started to stack up. So when the Jazz delivered another postseason embarrassment, the big man’s explosion in the locker room was about years of falling short, years of being told he couldn’t win, years of carrying the weight of expectations with no championship ring to show for it.

For a man who had lost eight NBA Finals before finally breaking through in 1972, West knew something about pain and persistence. He also understood how to channel heartbreak into legacy. O’Neal may have been raging, but his GM had seen it all before.

“He pins me and was like, ‘You dummy, I went to the Finals seven times before I won, your time is gonna come,'” O’Neal said, recalling what West told him. “So I was like, ‘The great Jerry West went to the Finals seven times before he won.’ I didn’t feel so bad.”

It didn’t take long after that for O’Neal to start winning.

Over the next four seasons, his transformation into a championship-caliber leader took full shape. By 2000, he was not only an NBA champion but the league’s MVP and Finals MVP. He would go on to win three straight titles with the Lakers from 2000 to 2002, forming one of the most dominant dynasties in league history.

In those Finals, he averaged 35.9 points and 15.2 rebounds per game — numbers that reflected not just size and strength, but maturity built in years of falling short.

West never let O’Neal forget that pain. And, to his credit, arguably the NBA’s most dominant player ever never ran from it.