Greg Ostertag's NBA education really started with a smack to the head.
At a game-day shootaround at the Great Western Forum on Oct. 31, hours before the Utah Jazz opened the 1997-98 season against the Los Angeles Lakers, Shaquille O'Neal floored Greg Ostertag with one open-palmed slap.O'Neal's teammates rushed to intervene, fearing a brawl could break out between the two huge men. But the Jazz's center didn't get back up. According to witnesses, Ostertag remained on the ground, fumbling for a dislodged contact lens.
That confrontation was just the tip of the iceberg of NBA reality that Ostertag has run into this season.
"This game is work," Ostertag said. "I didn't always look at it that way, but now it's all work."
The new season has brought a change in attitude to a happy-go-lucky guy who once lip-synced a Garth Brooks song in front of a packed Allen Fieldhouse during his freshman year at Kansas.
"Greg's had some rough times this year," guard Jeff Hornacek said. "He's tough about it, but it gets to anybody."
Ostertag has been the target of verbal slaps from the media, opponents and even his own teammates since Utah's run to the NBA Finals last season.
Of course, any 7-foot-2 person with a crewcut and a slightly vacant facial expression learns to develop thick skin, but Ostertag has been pushed beyond his breaking point this year.
"Things that people do, they get to you," he said. "You ignore things and just play your game ... but it all builds up."
During his two-and-a-half seasons in Utah, he has been called Baby Huey, Dopey, a goon, a slob, a slug and a goofball - and that was just by one Salt Lake newspaper columnist.
"Everybody has been rough on Greg, myself included," Utah coach Jerry Sloan said. "He's finding out that this league isn't fun most of the time."
When the Jazz picked Ostertag late in the first round of the 1995 draft, they seemed like a perfect match: a shot-blocking center in the mold of Mark Eaton who could be a perfect endpoint for Utah's funneling defense.
But on closer examination, many wondered why a methodical franchise like Utah would stake its future on a center whose work ethic had been questioned since high school.
Even more eyebrows were raised when the Jazz traded Felton Spencer shortly after the end of Ostertag's up-and-down rookie season. It was clear that Utah expected big things from Ostertag - and sooner rather than later.
Ostertag improved steadily last season. In the playoffs against the Lakers, he surprised everyone with a solid defensive effort on O'Neal, and he held his own defensively with both Hakeem Olajuwon and Luc Longley in Utah's run to the NBA Finals.
"I think we had a great year," Ostertag said after the Jazz lost in six games to the Bulls. "We're at the top of our game, and we're going to get better."
He didn't seem to feel any pressure when he signed a six-year, $39-million contract extension before the season began. At the press conference, he patted Jazz owner Larry Miller's head and joked about how "I can finally afford a haircut."
"We expect Greg to be our center of the future," Miller beamed. "He knows we've got a lot riding on him."
The first indication that the new season would be trying came from Karl Malone, Ostertag's closest friend on the team - and his most vocal critic.
The two share a love of hunting, off-roading, baseball and country music. At one memorable Sawyer Brown show at the Delta Center, Ostertag tried to coax Malone into dancing on stage.
In the last practice before the first regular-season game of his career, Ostertag tore a tendon in the little finger of his right hand. Team doctors said he needed surgery - but Malone goaded him into playing 18 minutes in the season-opener against Seattle.
The big brother-little brother relationship between Malone and Ostertag was strained on preseason media day, when Malone ripped into "some of the guys on this team who think they can take the summer off and then show up to camp like a bunch of fat-asses."
Ostertag later copped to the truth in Malone's accusations and expressed regret that he hadn't worked harder in the off-season. Ostertag has come to camp in poor shape each of his three seasons, and sloth is something Malone, Sloan and the rest of the spartan Jazz can't abide.
But until Slapgate, it appeared Ostertag was holding up. Contrary to what O'Neal apparently thought, Ostertag had spoken admiringly of the Lakers' center both before and after the Jazz beat the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals.
"Shaq's a great player, and I'd never say otherwise," he said in November. "Maybe he misinterpreted some things I said, but he's one ... of the best ever to play the game."
After the slap, Ostertag "played just horribly," he said. He was bounced from Utah's starting lineup after the first few games of the regular season, and his minutes began to decline soon afterward.
He began sporadically avoiding the media. At least two callers to local sports radio shows complained that Ostertag had been rude and offensive during community-relations trips to local schools. He also spent more time working with team psychologist Keith Henschen.
In December, while Utah was on a road trip in Miami, Malone publicly urged the Jazz to sign his friend and former teammate, center Ike Austin.
Things reached a low point on Dec. 15 during a road loss to Washington. After Sloan yanked Ostertag from the game after giving up a rebound, the two had a shouting match on the sideline punctuated by Ostertag kicking a chair and being thrown off the bench for the rest of the first half.
"Greg and I both said some things, and that was it," Sloan told reporters. "We've worked all that out."
It does appear the confrontation cleared the air between the two. The rest of the center's problems also have begun to wind down as the season wears on.
Ostertag played well through the rest of December, and he brought the Christmas Day Delta Center crowd to its feet when he ran down Houston point guard Brent Price and blocked a potentially game-tying breakaway layup in the fourth quarter of Utah's 107-103 win.
"That's a play I'm going to remember for a long time," Malone said. He and Ostertag appear to have ironed out their differences as well.
"That wasn't me at the start of the season," Ostertag says now. "I was kidnapped by aliens, and they did all sorts of crazy tests."
On Jan. 6, Ostertag set career-highs with 11 blocked shots and four assists. He has since re-assumed his starting position, and Sloan says he's playing better than ever.
"Greg's still got work to do, but he knows that better than anybody," Sloan said. "He understands that everything that's done to him is done to make him better. He'll be a better player because of these tough times."