I have a feeling that most of you have no idea who Trevor Winter is. He had a brief NBA career with the Minnesota Timberwolves back in 1999 during the lock-out shortened season.
When I mean brief, I mean brief. He played in one career NBA game for a total of five minutes.
We got more from Asylum:
While Winter is one of 52 players in NBA history to play in 1 career game, he has to have the coolest story.So essentially Winter's career was a "Hack-A-Shaq" moment in a regular season game.
A Minnesota native, he spent 4 years as a back-up center for the Golden Gophers, and was a senior on their 1997 Final Four team. Undrafted after college, Winter had been playing in the International Basketball Association for the Fargo-Moorhead Beez (yes, that was the team's real name) when he made the Timberwolves out of camp for the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season.
The abbreviated 50-game regular season began in February 1999, but Winter spent the first month-and-a-half of the season on injured reserve with a lower back strain. On March 16, 1999, Winter got his big break: That afternoon, Timberwolves head coach Flip Saunders informed him that he would be activated for that night's game against Shaquille O'Neal and the Los Angeles Lakers.
According to Winter, Saunders laid out the gameplan to him simply. "[He told me,] 'You have five fouls to give, and for every foul you don't use, we'll fine you $1,000,'" recalls Winter. He got the message loud and clear, proceeding to commit fouls against Shaq at a record-setting pace.
Guarding the most dominating player of an entire generation was a daunting task. "When I checked in," says Winter, "[Shaq] looked me up and down, knowing I was a rookie and that he was going to come right at me." On Winter's first defensive possession, the Lakers predictably went right to O'Neal, who spun baseline on Winter for a dunk and "tried to take the rim down on me," as Winter puts it.
Over the next five minutes of action, Winter compiled 3 rebounds and 5 fouls, as his career unwittingly turned into a monument of the Hack-a-Shaq tactic.
However, at least he made to the NBA (on some level) and the quote nearing the end of the article is absolutely hilarious:
"I'm not sure my kids even believe me," Winter laughs