Anthony Davis and LeBron James are the 1st pair of Lakers teammates to each record 20 30-point games in a season since Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in 2002-03.
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Harrison Wind: On @NBAonTNT tonight, Shaq said he once had to suspend Bol Bol and his son Shareef for going out with @souljaboy the night before a game. He then raved about Bol: “This kid right here has it. And I’m glad he’s with a guy like Mike Malone because Mike speaks our language.”
Former NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal made an appearance at a food distribution site at the NRG Center Saturday afternoon. O’Neal was shocked to learn that he was being awarded the act of kindness and humanitarian award by Mayor Sylvester Turner. “I didn’t know I was getting an award. I thought I was coming out here to help some people out. I don’t do it for stuff like that,” O’Neal said.
On Tuesday’s episode of the NBA on TNT, the sudio analysts wanted to make sure Anfernee Hardaway got his due. In a segment where they “give them their roses” they looked back on Anfernee Hardaway’s career. It gave Anfernee Hardaway the chance for a mini-reunion with Shaquille O’Neal as they both reflected on their time with the Magic.
Shaquille O’Neal called Anfernee Hardaway a mixture of all the other great players he played with. O’Neal said he could take over games like Dwyane Wade, could pass the ball like LeBron James and had the killer instinct like Kobe Bryant. If it were not for injuries, O’Neal said he would have been a clear-cut hall of famer. It is hard to argue that after four All-Star appearances and three All-NBA appearances in his time with the Magic.
A woman whose car was left stranded along a Florida interstate when her tire blew out got a little unexpected help from former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, sheriff’s officials say. O’Neal, who lives in the Orlando area, was traveling on Interstate 75 near Gainesville on Monday when he saw the woman pull onto the side of the road, the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office said on a Facebook post.
Shaq Isn’t In Chuck’s 10-Top of All-Time? | NBA on TNT
Shaquille O’Neal isn’t just one of the best centers to ever play basketball, he’s also a successful businessman, actor and platinum selling DJ. In fact, music was his life before it got hijacked by basketball. “I have been DJing since the eighties,” Shaq tells Maxim. “Music has always been in my blood. I was that guy spinning at frat parties after my basketball games, in the locker room, and making mixtapes.”
Draymond Green said his championship Warriors would beat your Lakers. Any thoughts on that? Shaquille O’Neal: I have a hard time believing that the greatest coach of all time, plus me and Kobe, wouldn’t match up quite nicely against Steve Kerr and his gang. Kobe takes Steph and dominates him. Fisher takes Klay and manhandles him. Fox takes Draymond and makes him foul out in the first half. Horace would do his thing with K.D. But let’s be real, K.D., is a beast, and you can only do so much with him. And then I’d remind Pachulia why I am in the Hall of Fame and he is not.
What is your fondest memory of Kobe Bryant? Shaquille O’Neal: I really cherish the time I had with Kobe. We helped each other win the championship for the first time. That says it all. Without Kobe I would have never maximized my true potential. I like to think the same for him. But if I had to choose one moment it would be Kobe’s final game at the Staples Center. He looked so at peace while on the court. He was a free man with no pressure at all to score or deliver. He dropped 60 that game and I was there courtside to cheer him on.
Former Orlando Magic great Shaquille O’Neal has endorsed John Mina’s re-election bid for Orange County sheriff.
TNT will look ahead to the NBA’s restart with a series of one-hour special editions of the Sports Emmy Award-winningInside the NBA presented by Kia and new NBA on TNT Tuesday Night studio shows starting Tuesday, July 7, at 8 p.m. ET. Inside the NBA’s Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal will be featured on Thursday nights, while Dwyane Wade, Candace Parker, O’Neal and Adam Lefkoe will appear on Tuesday nights. TNT’s Chris Haynes will report from Orlando.
hotfreestyle: Shaq says he would decline a ‘Last Dance’ documentary because Kobe is no longer here and says he will never wear his championship rings. RIP Kobe (@complex)
On June 21, at the 2020 ESPYS, Snoop Dogg honored Kobe in an emotional performance and ESPN aired a touching video of Kobe’s career highlights. Following the annual show, HollywoodLife spoke with Shaq, who said he watched the heartfelt tribute. “I miss young fella, that’s what I used to call him. But, those memories will always be there, our names will always be attached to one another,” he said in an exclusive interview, in which he also discussed a new Krispy Kreme partnership. “Kobe was stolen from us too early, but those are good memories,” he said.
After a 12-year title drought for the Lakers, a 27-year-old Shaq and 21-year-old Kobe led the Lakers to a 116-111 comeback nail-biting win against the Indiana Pacers in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Shaq remembered that day like it was yesterday. “I actually woke up that morning [June 20] and the great Andy Bernstein, who took a couple pictures of us at the parade (following the Lakers 2000 championship), sent me the photos,” he said, adding, “Those are good memories.”
Shaquille O’Neal — guest verse on “What’s Up Doc (Can We Rock?)” by Fu-Schnickens Shaq has made his fair share of missteps in the music world — his ill-advised beef with Damian Lillard was a master class in coming for the wrong guy — but back in 1993, a much younger Shaq was at the forefront of the sports/music crossover game. His verse (starting at 3:07 in the below video) isn’t the best one in the song, but the trick here was accepting a supporting role and letting the professionals shine. Has this song aged well? Not really. Was it kind of a rip-off of House of Pain’s “Jump Around”? Yeah, that’s fair. But by 1993 standards, it wasn’t half bad. Shaq’s willingness to let the stronger rappers do the heavy lifting is enough to just sneak him into this class.
This is an oral history of O’Neal’s time at LSU. Kent Lowe, LSU sports communication staff (1988-present): He was very raw. He was a big kid. There were a few games where Dale (Brown) early on didn’t start him and brought him off the bench, like at the first TV timeout or radio timeout. Dale Brown, LSU head coach (1972-97): He was struggling. I told him before practice, “Come to my office an hour early.” He came in. I said, “Shaquille, I’ve got a question for you. Do you know how good you could really be?” Whenever he got nervous, he stuttered. “N-n-n-no. Not really.” I said, “You don’t have to shut your eyes. This isn’t a seance. You don’t need a Ouija board. You don’t need a crystal ball. This is how good you can be.”
T.J. Pugh, LSU guard (1990-92): You really didn’t know what to do, basically. I didn’t see anybody in the country who could match up one-on-one with him in any shape or form. Lowe: He had a way of when people came up and asked, “How did you play tonight?” He would give percentages. He’d say, “I played 77% tonight. The team played about 68%.” Everybody writes it down at first. Then everybody kind of got the joke.
The Hoosiers won 89-79 and, like Georgia Tech in 1990, advanced to the Final Four. O’Neal had 36 points, 12 rebounds and five blocks in the final college game of his career. Jones: Shaq goes 12 for 12 at the free-throw line. He’s capable. But that was one of those games that meant something to him. Tracey: The mechanics of Shaq’s body do not allow him to shoot a free throw. He cannot get his elbow under the ball to shoot it. People say, “Why doesn’t he practice?” I want to punch people right in the mouth. You … think we didn’t practice? Mechanically, he couldn’t get his elbow under the ball. It’s mechanically not possible.
Tracey: He had these turntables. He would scratch to the point where you have to go in there and say, “Dude, are you serious? Can you please stop. I’ll pay you. Do you want McDonald’s? Do we need to go to Burger King?” We used to go to Blimpie. That was our big deal. He loved Blimpie. I said, “I’ll give you a Blimpies to stop this s*** right now because it’s awful, and I can’t put up with it.”
20 Jun
Attention, all Hollywood producers. Shaquille O’Neal and Rob Gronkowski have an idea for the next blockbuster event of the year. “Any producer that wants to redo ‘Step Brothers’ or ‘Twins,’” O’Neal said. “We’ll do any scene,” Gronkowski cut in. “You just come up with it, we’ll do it, we’ll give it our best shot. That’s what we do.” The towering twosome will bring that same energy next Saturday when they host “Shaq’s Fun House vs. Gronk Beach,” a virtual, live-streamed party that will air live on TikTok and www.ShaqVsGronk.com at 8 p.m. ET.
Shaquille O’Neal urged the New Orleans Saints last Thursday not to let the media divide them in the wake of Drew Brees’ national anthem comments, a source confirmed to ESPN. “They’re going to try to divide you, just like they divided us with the Lakers! Me and Kobe [Bryant], we had a great thing going, but the media divided our team,” O’Neal said in the message during a virtual team meeting. “We could have won five more championships! Stay strong. Don’t let the media divide you! Don’t let social media divide you!”
O’Neal discussed being present for the Saints’ meeting last Thursday on TNT. He said he wouldn’t discuss his message to the Saints out of respect to coach Sean Payton’s wishes. He did, however, discuss how Brees’ apology was accepted by his teammates. “They said, ‘Drew, we know your character. We know you stepped in some stuff that you can’t get out of, but guess what: We want you to do more positive things and less talking.’ And they all said we accept your apology,” O’Neal said. One Saints player told ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler that he didn’t know O’Neal was addressing the team until the end of the call and thought it was a surprise by Payton. “He started speaking and I was like, ‘Oh, s—, it’s Shaq,'” the player told Fowler.
The Blazers, though combustible, were talented and ridiculously deep, with five current or future All-Stars—Scottie Pippen, Rasheed Wallace, Steve Smith, Detlef Schrempf and Jermaine O’Neal—plus potent offensive players like Damon Stoudamire and Bonzi Wells. It was arguably the strongest team the Lakers faced in their three-peat—and one of the best ever to miss the Finals. “It’s probably the best team I’ve ever faced playing basketball, period,” says Robert Horry, who won seven championships in his 16-year career, including three with the Lakers. “They were the toughest team,” Shaq says, “and they were the only team that wasn’t scared of us.”
06 Jun
Tim Bontemps: Shaquille O’Neal: “People are finally seeing what we’ve been seeing our whole lives … It’s 2020. You would think, in 2020, things would have started to get better. But as I’m talking to some old-timers, this is how they used to feel back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”
Tim Reynolds: On TNT, Shaquille O’Neal reveals that he was on the call where Drew Brees apologized to New Orleans teammates today. O’Neal and Charles Barkley both insisted that Brees made a mistake, and O’Neal said he accepted Brees’ apology.
03 Jun
28 May
It’s a shame they weren’t even mentioned in The Last Dance, even though they were champions when Michael Jordan made his midseason return to the NBA. Some of the other toughest roads faced on the way to a title, per our research, include Jordan’s 1996-97 Chicago Bulls, LeBron James’ 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers, who had to face the 73-9 Golden State Warriors in the Finals, and the Shaq-and-Kobe–Bryant 2001-02 squad.
Nikos Varlas: Tomas @Tomas Satoransky’s all-time #NBA five: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley With respect toward all the players but these impacted his generation the most.
Kareem Rush on how hard it was to adapt to the Triangle Offense for Gary Payton and Karl Malone: “I think if he would’ve had more than a year to run it. Because that takes time. That stuff is drilled. Gary’s coming in towards the tail end of his career and he’s used to playing a certain way so you’re transitioning to a Triangle Offense and was definitely probably a learning curve for him. He like everybody else when they learn something new, it’s just going to take time and to figure his way out, to working with Shaq and Kobe as well as Malone you know, everybody needs an adjustment period. So he didn’t have the best year, I don’t think that he’ll tell you the same thing, but he was still was an integral part in what we did to get to where we were going. Hall of Fame guy. But yeah, the Triangle Offense is something that’s not easy to pick up.”
Shaquille O'Neal apologizes for made-up story about David Robinson
Shaquille O’Neal was another elite competitor who dominated the NBA during his day, and like Jordan, he found motivation wherever he could. For years, O’Neal maintained the story that former San Antonio Spurs All-Star center David Robinson denied Shaq an autograph when he was a kid, and O’Neal used that slight as a reason to best Robinson whenever he got an opportunity. But now that both have been retired from the game for some time, O’Neal finally came clean to Robinson. During a Zoom conference call with a plethora of other former NBA stars, O’Neal apologized to Robinson and admitted that the entire story was fabricated. “David, I want to say I apologize for making up that rumor,” O’Neal said. “David took all my shine when he came to San Antonio, so I hated him for that. And then first couple of years he used to kill me, so I had to make up my rumor to get mad. … He used to sprint up and down the court. I used to be like, ‘God bless, slow down.’ So, I made up a scenario. ‘Oh, yeah, when I was 13 you didn’t sign my autograph. I’m mad now.'”
When Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal joined the Miami Heat, he didn’t exactly get along with head coach Pat Riley. O’Neal and Hall of Fame guard Gary Payton shared a story about one of O’Neal and Riley’s fights on “NBA Inside Stuff” Sunday night. The Zoom call featured some of basketball’s biggest names sharing old stories from their playing days. “I had a fight with Pat Riley,” O’Neal said. “Gary Payton had to grab me from choking Pat Riley.”
Payton may have stopped him from doing it, but he wasn’t too happy with his Hall of Fame coach either. “You was going to choke him out too, boy,” Payton responded. “You should’ve choked him because I was going to choke him right after that.”
For years, O’Neal maintained the story that former San Antonio Spurs All-Star center David Robinson denied Shaq an autograph when he was a kid, and O’Neal used that slight as a reason to best Robinson whenever he got an opportunity. But now that both have been retired from the game for some time, O’Neal finally came clean to Robinson. During a Zoom conference call with a plethora of other former NBA stars, O’Neal apologized to Robinson and admitted that the entire story was fabricated.
“David, I want to say I apologize for making up that rumor,” O’Neal said. “David took all my shine when he came to San Antonio, so I hated him for that. And then first couple of years he used to kill me, so I had to make up my rumor to get mad. … He used to sprint up and down the court. I used to be like, ‘God bless, slow down.’ So, I made up a scenario. ‘Oh, yeah, when I was 13 you didn’t sign my autograph. I’m mad now.'”
Robinson revealed that O’Neal previously admitted to him that the story was made up while the two were teammates on Team USA at the 1996 Olympics. “We were on the Olympic team,” Robinson said. “We were sitting on the plane together and I said, ‘Shaq, man, what is this stuff about me not signing an autograph?’ He was like, ‘Man, I’m sorry about that. I made that up.'”
In two days’ time, the two 7-footers were set to pull off what Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson could not. They were going to be the leading men in a pay-per-view blockbuster extravaganza featuring multiple NBA stars playing each other in games of one-on-one. Shaq would later go on to win four NBA titles and three MVPs, but looking back now, Shaq felt he had something to prove. “He kind of edged me out in the Finals, but it wasn’t a really fair edge out because when I got the ball, they doubled me and we didn’t double him,” Shaq says. “I wanted to show people that I’m unstoppable. Nobody can guard me on one-on-one.”
It turned out the 1995 NBA Finals wasn’t just a battle for the Larry O’Brien Trophy. It was a launchpad for a marketing tour de force. And on that Thursday afternoon in the fall, it was all coming together. Armato launched a successful TV campaign hyping the two players, signed the other participants, booked the venue and promoted the heck out of the $19.95 PPV. “It was moving toward a great success,” Armato says now over the phone. “until it got derailed.”
The evening before the event, Armato got a call. It was from Olajuwon’s teammate Clyde Drexler. It wasn’t good news. “I want to talk to you about something,” Drexler said, according to Armato. “Hakeem. He’s not feeling well. His back.” Apparently, Olajuwon had hurt his back working out earlier that week. He’d hoped it would feel better by the weekend, but it wasn’t improving. After having Olajuwon examined by a physician, Armato decided to cancel late Friday night, the day before the showdown. There would be no “War on the Floor” or undercard matchups.
Back in 1995, Trump, of course, didn’t pass up an opportunity to turn up the controversy. “There’s a rumor out there that the NBA had something to do with it,” Trump told the Associated Press. “But it’s just a rumor.” Twenty-five years later, Armato laughs at the suggestion. “That did not happen,” Armato says. “That 100 percent did not happen. I know that for a fact.” Refunds were issued. Money was lost. But Armato nearly pulled it off, and not because of his relationship with NBA commissioner David Stern. It was because Armato had something his predecessors did not — a loophole created by opportunity.
It was a scorching hot Thursday afternoon on Broadway in New York City back in September 1995, just three months after the Houston Rockets bested the Orlando Magic in the NBA Finals. The teams’ two superstars, Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neal, were sitting atop a dais at a makeshift stage for a press conference at the partially-constructed All-Star Cafe. In two days’ time, the two 7-footers were set to pull off what Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson could not. They were going to be the leading men in a pay-per-view blockbuster extravaganza featuring multiple NBA stars playing each other in games of one-on-one.
Shaq would later go on to win four NBA titles and three MVPs, but looking back now, Shaq felt he had something to prove. “He kind of edged me out in the Finals, but it wasn’t a really fair edge out because when I got the ball, they doubled me and we didn’t double him,” Shaq says. “I wanted to show people that I’m unstoppable. Nobody can guard me on one-on-one.”
At that point, Shaq was known as a rim-wrecker, not a skilled iso player. But he was eager to remind people he was a guard in his early high school days. “My NBA game was nothing like my one-on-one game,” Shaq says. “My one-on-one game was similar to Grant Hill. I could handle it, put it between the legs, do a lot of tricks and all that stuff. (Olajuwon) wouldn’t have been expecting that. He wouldn’t have been ready for that. I wanted to be able to showcase a different game.”
This was big money. Shaq and Hakeem would duke it out for a $1 million purse, furnished by Taco Bell. The two giants were at the top of the NBA at the time, but the heavyweight bout, titled “War on the Floor,” needed a slick promoter and a grand venue. It got one. Next to O’Neal and Olajuwon on the dais was the event’s host and promoter: Donald J. Trump. On Saturday, the Shaq-Hakeem basketball bout would be set for Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, NJ.
“Shaq versus Hakeem in the Taco Bell One-on-One Championship will be the most fabulous event Atlantic City has ever seen, and only the Trump Taj Mahal could host such a mega-event,” Trump said that day according to multiple media reports. “Once again, the entire world will be focused on Atlantic City for what is sure to be an event that will go down in history.”
