EVANSVILLE — Damon Bailey sits in a tiny office in Downtown Evansville, reliving the glory days on demand. The Indiana basketball legend is here because his maintenance supplies company, Bedford-based Hawkins Bailey Warehouse, just bought local cleaning supplies company Kor-X-All.

Bailey will be in Evansville one or two days a week, so you might see him grabbing lunch somewhere around town.

But while Bailey and Kor-X-All owner Mark Senzell are game to talk about cleaning supplies, the Courier & Press has other questions. Probing questions that might, frankly, embarrass Bailey. Or compel the now middle-aged former Indiana University hoops star to brag on himself a little.

In his heyday in the 1990s, did Bailey ever posterize someone like, say, Michael Jordan? Trash talk legendary trash talker Larry Bird? Even in a pickup game? Did he get posterized by any player whose name is instantly recognizable? Come on, the Courier & Press implored. There's got to be a story here.

There was this one time, Bailey says with a chuckle.

It was an AAU Junior Olympics game back in the late 80s, in the University of Minnesota's Williams Arena, famous for its raised floor design. The floor was about four feet high, Bailey recalls.

"It was late in the game. We were winning, they were pressing, and one of my teammates turned the ball over on a press," he says. "Shaquille (O'Neal) was coming, and I was kind of underneath the basket."

O'Neal — even then a mammoth, earth-moving, seven-foot dunking machine — was bearing in on Bailey for a monster jam. O'Neal didn't do layups. Bailey knew there was nowhere to hide.

"It wasn't on purpose. I couldn't get out of the way," he explains in Senzell's office at Kor-X-All.

Bailey chuckles at the memory of it. Just another day on the court, getting dunked on by the player the world knows by one name — Shaq. It wasn't an everyday dunk, either.

O'Neal dunked with such ferocity and power, Bailey recalls, that he broke the rim.

"I turned around, and there he was," Bailey says. "I go flying off the end of the court, down four feet."

The moment might not have covered him in glory, but the glory of Bailey's entire hoops career is undeniable.

Damon Bailey was a high school phenom at Bedford North Lawrence, where he played in a state championship — and won — in front of more than 41,000 fans. Coach Bobby Knight sat on wood bleachers and watched Bailey play as an eighth grader in 1986.

At Bedford North Lawrence, Bailey set a state scoring record in boys’ basketball that still stands with 3,134 points. He won IndyStar Mr. Basketball and a state championship in 1990.

Bailey, who was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016, won 108 games during his four-year career at IU and finished sixth on the school’s all-time scoring list with 1,741 points. The Hoosiers won two Big Ten titles during his tenure and reached at Final Four in 1992.

IU was in the national championship hunt every year Bailey was there.

Bailey played one season with the NBA's Indiana Pacers before bouncing around in pro basketball's minor leagues for a few years. He last played organized basketball in 1999.

Nowadays, Bailey is strictly a businessman. He jokes that Senzell is a bigger sports fan than he is. Senzell doesn't deny it.

"We got together because we buy from the same suppliers, and one of our suppliers kind of hooked us up," Senzell says.

Bailey's company is based out of Bedford, where he lives. They have a location in Kalamazoo, Michigan too. Bailey, who bought his first janitorial supply company in 2010, spends a lot of his time on the road. He's 52 now, and even his days coaching his kids' games are behind him.

The future is now. Bailey has three children, two daughters and a son. Two of them played college basketball too, and another was on the dance team at Butler University.

"We're a very athletic family," he says. "Sports are a big part of what we do, and probably always will be."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: You might see Damon Bailey around Evansville — yeah, that Damon Bailey