Shaquille O’Neal dropped by ‘The pivot podcast’ and spoke candidly about some of the biggest mistakes he’s made in his life. “What you do makes you look perfect, but you’re not,” said the former player. In sports, he recognized his failures in his relationships with his teammates Penny Hardaway in the Magic and with the ill-fated Kobe Bryant in the Lakers. “Big mistakes,” she said.
Personally, it was his two marriages. “I don’t dwell on things much, but I do. He was arrogant, he was dumb. They’re the only ones three big regrets that I have”, assures the winner of four NBA rings and member of the Hall of Fame.
The legendary pvot married Shaunie O’Neal in 2002 and they had three children together. They initially separated in 2007, and although they briefly reconciled, Shaunie filed for divorce in 2009 and it was finalized in 2011. “I was bad and she was incredible. I didn’t protect him. Sometimes you live that double life and it catches you. I’m not going to say it was her. It was all my fault”dice.
Coming home and forgetting basketball
What she missed most after the divorce was her children: “The best feeling for me was coming home and hearing five or six different voices. It didn’t matter if he had missed 15 free throws and we had lost. They don’t care about that. After the divorce I was lost. I had a 7,000 square meter house to myself. It is hard to live like this, without children. You go to the gym and there is no one, you go to the rooms and there is no one…
Without a partner, what kept him going was thinking about his children. “I said to myself, ‘Okay, you’re not married, but you still have to protect and support this family. Get your ass up, man.’ You may not be a husband, but you will always be a father. and a father’s job is to protect, provide and love,” he says.