The curse of being good at things is that people keep asking you to do more things.
Everyone wanted a piece of 20-year-old Shaquille O’Neal. He was 7’1”, charismatic, and athletically gifted beyond belief. Obviously an athlete, but potentially so much more.
By the time he entered the NBA in 1992, Shaq was already being hailed as potentially the most dominant centre in basketball history. In his rookie year with the Orlando Magic, he averaged 23.4 points per game, destroyed two backboards, and made it clear he could be the most unstoppable force the sport had ever seen. But success has a way of multiplying your options while dividing your focus.
You see, Shaq wanted to be more than just a ball player. He wanted to be a renaissance man. While his rival David Robinson was in the gym working on his footwork, Shaq was in the recording studio laying down tracks for his rap album “Shaq Diesel”. While Tim Duncan was studying game tape, Shaq was on movie sets filming “Kazaam” and “Steel”. While Hakeem Olajuwon was perfecting his dream shake, Shaq was earning a side income as a DJ and exploring business ventures.
Shaq was perhaps the best centre to ever play. He was athletic, powerful, and so dominant that the NBA literally changed its rules because of him. Other teams employed a strategy called “Hack-a-Shaq”, intentionally fouling him to send him to the free-throw line because that was literally their best chance of stopping him.
Yet Shaq never truly refined his game. He relied on his physical dominance rather than developing the technical finesse that could have made him completely unguardable. Compare this to Hakeem Olajuwon, who was arguably less physically gifted but whose footwork and post moves were so polished that he could score from virtually any position.
Despite his incredible natural gifts, Shaq never quite reached the heights he could have.
His free-throw shooting remained infamously poor. His conditioning was often questioned. Even his dominant physical gifts weren’t maximised - coaches frequently noted he could have been in better shape, and this was ultimately what fractured his championship-winning partnership with Kobe Bryant.
To be clear - Shaq’s career was still legendary. Four championships, multiple scoring titles, and an MVP award. He’s unquestionably one of the greatest centres ever. But there’s a difference between being great and being the greatest. The gap between what Shaq achieved and what he could have achieved is one of basketball’s great “what if” stories.
There’s a fundamental tension between exploration and exploitation that defines every high achiever’s career. Do you exploit the thing you already know you’re good at—the opportunity right in front of you? Or do you continue to explore, mealing out your talent, dividing your passion for a taste of everything on offer?
Focus isn’t just choosing what to do, it’s deciding which things you’re willing to forgo. The things you’ll have to ignore in pursuit of the one thing at the top of your list. If you can’t prioritise, you’re likely to bounce around, accumulating a little of this and a little of that, but ultimately sacrificing the full extent of your potential.
Achieving moonshot goals requires narrowing the funnel of your vision until it’s as sharp as an arrow. Focus.
