by Luke Winn, SI.com
PROTOTYPE: The Homegrown LSU Big Man
PRODUCTS: Stromile Swift (Shreveport, 1999-2000), Brandon Bass (Baton Rouge, 2003-04), Glen Davis (Baton Rouge, 2004-), Tasmin Mitchell (Denham Springs, 2005-)
Did it all start with Neon Bodeaux? In 1994, Western University coach Pete Bell made a recruiting trip to Algiers, La., and discovered Bodeaux, a 7-foot-1, 300-pounder, dominating a pick-up game in a strange, shack-like gymnasium. Bodeaux had supposedly spent time in the Army and, despite being freakishly athletic, had never played organized basketball. “He’s totally raw,” Bell’s talent scout, Slick, said of Bodeaux. “He’s never been coached.”
Bodeaux also didn’t really exist: He was a character in the “dark-side-of-college-hoops” film Blue Chips, played by a young Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq was New Jersey-born and Texas-raised, but two years before his silver-screen debut in Blue Chips, he was an All-America at LSU — the school that has enjoyed recent success on the strength of the real-life prospects that the mythical Bodeaux represented: The big men of the Bayou.
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