Basketball Hall-of-Famer and four-time NBA champion Shaquille O’Neal opened up about what really goes on when stars in the league go on the road.
O’Neal was recently hosting an episode of his show, ‘The Big Podcast’, with fellow TNT personality Adam Lefkoe.
In that episode, Lefkoe made the off-hand remark about fame-chasing women, saying ‘every city you go to [as an NBA player], the women are looking for you.’
But O’Neal rebuffed that ᴀssumption, saying that ‘never happened’ in his career – which spanned over 1,200 regular season games.
‘That’s a myth,’ the 53-year-old O’Neal said, ‘I’ve been in a lot of lobbies — I didn’t see anybody.
‘So I remember I was coming in; they did this ‘Esquire’ article about how the girls would be waiting out. So, I was looking for that. Never happened. Never happened.
Shaquille O’Neal opened up about the struggles of maintaining relationships on the road
The former NBA star said it’s hard for stars to go from a ‘tiger lifestyle’ to trying to settle down
‘Trust me, I was the baddest on the road. It never happened. You go and you see people.’
Shaq and Lefkoe were joined on this episode by former NBA guard Brandon Jennings, who agreed with O’Neal’s ᴀssessment.
From there, ‘Diesel’ explained how hard it was to make a relationship work while living on the road.
‘The problem with us is when you live a certain lifestyle, and then it all shuts down, you only know what you know,’ O’Neal said.
‘So, if you don’t know the rules of commitment, it’ll never work. And then, you know, us being not committed, everything is an excuse. Because once you say to somebody, ‘I’m going to commit,’ you’ve got to do your f***ing job as a man. Right?’
‘Once I say, ‘You’re my girlfriend,’ do your job as a man. Everything else is an excuse. All that — there is so much into that. Once I say I commit to you, I’m supposed to do that as a man. I didn’t do that. That’s why all s–t has always failed.
‘But if you live a tiger lifestyle and then you try to become a tame tiger — it ain’t going to work. It’s not going to work.
‘So, you know, there’s a reason why the divorce rate is high. Because we live a — and not all of us — but like, we live a certain lifestyle. And a lot comes with it.
‘And then when that’s all stopping, and you trying to go out and look for that, if you don’t understand their rules and understand their laws — it’ll never work.’
In 2023, Shaq admitted that he ‘messed up’ his relationship with his ex-wife, Shaunie
O’Neal hasn’t shied away from admitting to mistakes that he’s made in past relationships.
Back in 2023, he spoke to rapper and R&B singer Monica on her Apple Music Hits show ‘Mo Talk Radio’, where he admitted to ‘being dumb’ in two of his past relationships with ‘two perfect women’.
‘My first one was my baby mother, Arnetta [Yardbourgh], and then I met [his now ex-wife] Shaunie [Nelson]. Shaunie was also a perfect woman and I messed it up,’ he said.
‘Yeah, you know, we were young and always just doing dumb stuff. But, the good thing about our relationship is that they forgave me and we have a good relationship now. But when you ask me about the perfect woman — I had two perfect women and I messed it up, just by, you know, being dumb.’
O’Neal and Shaunie were married for nine years before divorcing in 2011. They share four children: Shareef (who plays in the NBA’s G-League), Amirah (who played college basketball at LSU and Texas Southern), Shaqir (who currently plays at Florida A&M) and Me’arah (who just wrapped up her freshman year on the University of Florida’s women’s basketball team).
