Shaquille O'Neal


Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal, commonly known as Shaq, is an American former professional basketball player who is a sports analyst on the television program Inside the NBA. He is a and center who played for six teams over his 19-year career in the National Basketball Association and is a four-time NBA champion. O'Neal is widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players and centers of all time.
After playing college basketball for the LSU Tigers, O'Neal was selected by the Orlando Magic with the first overall pick in the 1992 NBA draft. He quickly became one of the best centers in the league, winning NBA Rookie of the Year in 1992–93 and leading his team to the 1995 NBA Finals. After four years with the Magic, O'Neal signed as a free agent with the Los Angeles Lakers. They won three consecutive championships in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Amid a feud between O'Neal and his teammate Kobe Bryant, O'Neal was traded to the Miami Heat in 2004, and his fourth NBA championship followed in 2006. Midway through the 2007–2008 season he was traded to the Phoenix Suns. After a season-and-a-half with the Suns, O'Neal was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2009–10 season. O'Neal played for the Boston Celtics in the 2010–11 season before retiring.
O'Neal's individual accolades include the 1999–2000 Most Valuable Player Award; the 1992–93 NBA Rookie of the Year award; 15 All-Star Game selections, three All-Star Game MVP awards; three Finals MVP awards; two scoring titles; 14 All-NBA team selections, and three NBA All-Defensive Team selections. He is one of only three players to win NBA MVP, All-Star Game MVP and Finals MVP awards in the same year ; the other players are Willis Reed in 1970 and Michael Jordan in 1996 and 1998. He ranks 9th all-time in points scored, 6th in field goals, 15th in rebounds, and 8th in blocks. O'Neal was honored as one of the league's greatest players of all time by being named to the NBA 50th Anniversary Team in 1996. Due to his ability to dunk the basketball and score from close range, O'Neal also had a 58.2% career field goal percentage and led the league in field goal percentage ten times. O'Neal was elected into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016. He was elected to the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2017. In October 2021, O'Neal was again honored as one of the league's greatest players of all time by being named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.
In addition to his basketball career, O'Neal has released four rap albums, with his first, Shaq Diesel, going platinum, and his second, Shaq Fu: Da Return, going gold. O'Neal is also an electronic music producer, and touring DJ, known as Diesel. He has appeared in numerous films and has starred in his own reality shows, Shaq's Big Challenge and Shaq Vs. He hosts The Big Podcast with Shaq. He was a minority owner of the Sacramento Kings from 2013 to 2022 and is the general manager of Kings Guard Gaming of the NBA 2K League. He is also the general manager of the Sacramento State Hornets men's basketball team.

Early life

Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal was born on March 6, 1972, in Newark, New Jersey, to Lucille O'Neal and Joe Toney, who played high school basketball and was offered a basketball scholarship to play at Seton Hall. Toney struggled with drug addiction and was imprisoned for drug possession when O'Neal was an infant. Upon his release, he did not resume a place in O'Neal's life and instead agreed to relinquish his parental rights to O'Neal's Jamaican stepfather, Phillip Arthur Harrison, a career Army sergeant. O'Neal remained estranged from his biological father for decades; O'Neal had not spoken with Toney or expressed an interest in establishing a relationship. On his 1994 rap album, Shaq Fu: The Return, O'Neal voiced his feelings of disdain for Toney in the song "Biological Didn't Bother", dismissing him with the line "Phil is my father". However, O'Neal's feelings toward Toney mellowed in the years following Harrison's death in 2013, and the two met for the first time in March 2016, with O'Neal telling him, "I don't hate you. I had a good life. I had Phil."
O'Neal came from a tall family. His father and mother were and tall, respectively, and by age 13, O'Neal was already tall. He credited the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in Newark with giving him a safe place to play and keeping him off the streets. "It gave me something to do," he said. "I'd just go there to shoot. I didn't even play on a team." Because of his stepfather's career in the military, the family left Newark, moving to military bases in Germany and Texas.
After returning from Germany, O'Neal's family settled in San Antonio, Texas. By age 16, O'Neal had grown to, and he began playing basketball at Robert G. Cole High School. He led his team to a 68–1 record over two years and helped the team win the state championship during his senior year. His 791 rebounds during the 1989 season remains a state record for a player in any classification. Cole High retired O'Neal's No. 33 in 2014. According to O'Neal, he wanted to wear 33 because he had made a sky hook and received comparisons to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who wore 33. In 2021, O'Neal said his admiration for Patrick Ewing inspired him to wear the number 33.

College career

After graduating from high school in 1989, O'Neal studied business at Louisiana State University. He first met Tigers coach Dale Brown years earlier in Europe when O'Neal's stepfather was stationed on a U.S. Army base at Wildflecken, West Germany. While playing for Brown at LSU, O'Neal was a two-time All-American, two-time SEC Player of the Year, and received the Adolph Rupp Trophy as NCAA men's basketball player of the year in 1991; he was also named college player of the year by Associated Press and UPI. O'Neal left LSU early to pursue his NBA career, but [|continued his education] even after becoming a professional player. He was later inducted into the LSU Hall of Fame. A bronze statue of O'Neal is located in front of the LSU Basketball Practice Facility.

Professional career

Orlando Magic (1992–1996)

Rookie of the Year (1992–1993)

The Orlando Magic selected O'Neal with the 1st overall pick in the 1992 NBA draft. In the summer before moving to Orlando, he spent time in Los Angeles under the tutelage of Hall of Famer Magic Johnson. O'Neal wore No. 32 because veteran teammate Terry Catledge refused to relinquish the 33 jersey. O'Neal said that 32 was the first number he wore when he began playing basketball.
O'Neal was named the Player of the Week in his first week in the NBA, the first player to do so. During his rookie season, O'Neal averaged 23.4 points on 56.2% shooting, 13.9 rebounds, and 3.5 blocks per game for the season. He was named the 1993 NBA Rookie of the Year and was the first rookie to be voted an All-Star starter since Michael Jordan in 1985. The Magic finished 41–41, winning 20 more games than the previous season, but missed the playoffs by virtue of a tie-breaker with the Indiana Pacers. On more than one occasion during the year, Sports Illustrated writer Jack McCallum overheard O'Neal saying, "We've got to get Matt Guokas|Matty out of here and bring in Brian Hill |Brian ."

First playoff appearance (1993–1994)

In 1993–1994, O'Neal's second season, Hill was the coach and Guokas was reassigned to the front office. O'Neal improved his scoring average to 29.4 points while leading the NBA in field goal percentage at 60%. On November 20, 1993, against the New Jersey Nets, O'Neal registered the first triple-double of his career, recording 24 points to go along with career highs of 28 rebounds and 15 blocks. He was voted into the All-Star game and also made the All-NBA 3rd Team. Teamed with newly drafted Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway, the Magic finished with a record of 50–32 and made the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. In his first playoff series, O'Neal averaged 20.7 points and 13.3 rebounds as the Pacers swept the Magic.

First scoring title and NBA Finals (1994–1996)

In O'Neal's third season, 1994–95, he led the NBA in scoring with a 29.3 point average, while finishing second in MVP voting to David Robinson and entering his third straight All-Star Game along with Hardaway. They formed one of the league's top duos and helped Orlando to a 57–25 record and the Atlantic Division crown. The Magic won their first-ever playoff series against the Boston Celtics in the 1995 NBA playoffs. They then defeated the Chicago Bulls in the conference semifinals. After beating Reggie Miller's Indiana Pacers, the Magic reached the NBA Finals, facing the defending NBA champion Houston Rockets. O'Neal played well in his first Finals appearance, averaging 28 points on 59.5% shooting, 12.5 rebounds, and 6.3 assists. Despite this, the Rockets, led by future Hall-of-Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, swept the series in four games.
O'Neal was injured for a great deal of the 1995–96 season, missing 28 games. He averaged 26.6 points and 11 rebounds per game, made the All-NBA 3rd Team, and played in his 4th All-Star Game. Despite O'Neal's injuries, the Magic finished with a regular season record of 60–22, second in the Eastern conference to the Chicago Bulls, who finished with an NBA record 72 wins. Orlando easily defeated the Detroit Pistons and the Atlanta Hawks in the first two rounds of the 1996 NBA Playoffs; however, they were no match for Jordan's Bulls, who swept them in the Eastern Conference finals.

Los Angeles Lakers (1996–2004)

O'Neal–Bryant tandem buildup (1996–1999)

O'Neal became a free agent after the 1995–96 NBA season. In the summer of 1996, O'Neal was named to the United States Olympic basketball team, and was later part of the gold medal-winning team at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. While the Olympic basketball team was training in Orlando, the Orlando Sentinel published a poll that asked whether the Magic should fire Hill if that were one of O'Neal's conditions for returning. 82% answered "no". O'Neal had a power struggle while playing under Hill. He said the team "just didn't respect ". Another question in the poll asked whether O'Neal was worth $115 million, in reference to the amount of the Magic's offer; 91.3% of the response said it was not. O'Neal's Olympic teammates teased him over the poll. He was also upset that the Orlando media implied O'Neal was not a good role model for having a child with his longtime girlfriend with no immediate plans to marry. O'Neal compared his lack of privacy in Orlando to "feeling like a big fish in a dried-up pond". He also learned that Hardaway considered himself the leader of the Magic and did not want O'Neal making more money than him.
On the team's first full day at the Olympics in Atlanta, the media announced that O'Neal would join the Los Angeles Lakers on a seven-year, $121 million contract. O'Neal insisted he did not choose Los Angeles for the money; discussing the signing he referred to a couple of his product endorsements, saying: "I'm tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok." O'Neal switched his jersey to No. 34 on the Lakers, as the No. 32 jersey he had worn in Orlando was retired in honor of Magic Johnson, and the No. 33 jersey he had worn at LSU was retired in honor of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The No. 34 jersey was also in honor of his stepfather, who wore that number in the Army. The Lakers won 56 games during the 1996–97 season. O'Neal averaged 26.2 points and 12.5 rebounds in his first season with Los Angeles; however, he again missed over 30 games due to injury. The Lakers made the playoffs, but were eliminated in the second round by the Utah Jazz in five games. In his first playoff game for the Lakers, O'Neal scored 46 points against the Portland Trail Blazers, the most for the Lakers in a playoff game since Jerry West had 53 in 1969. On December 17, 1996, O'Neal shoved Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls; Rodman's teammates Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan restrained Rodman and prevented further conflict. The Los Angeles Daily News reported that O'Neal was willing to be suspended for fighting Rodman, and O'Neal said: "It's one thing to talk tough and one thing to be tough."
The following season, O'Neal averaged 28.3 points and 11.4 rebounds. He led the league with a 58.4 field goal percentage, the first of four consecutive seasons in which he did so. The Lakers finished the season 61–21, first in the Pacific Division, and were the second seed in the western conference during the 1998 NBA Playoffs. After defeating the Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle SuperSonics in the first two rounds, the Lakers again fell to the Jazz, this time in a 4–0 sweep.
With the tandem of O'Neal and teenage superstar Kobe Bryant, expectations for the Lakers increased; however, personnel changes were a source of instability during the 1998–99 season. Long-time Laker point guard Nick Van Exel was traded to the Denver Nuggets; his former backcourt partner Eddie Jones was packaged with back-up center Elden Campbell for Glen Rice to satisfy a demand by O'Neal for a shooter. Coach Del Harris was fired, and former Lakers forward Kurt Rambis finished the season as head coach. The Lakers finished with a 31–19 record during the lockout-shortened season. Although they made the playoffs, they were swept by the San Antonio Spurs, led by Tim Duncan and David Robinson in the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. The Spurs would go on to win their first NBA title in 1999.