Shaq is an old-school basketball player. Although he has been ubiquitous both on the court and in pop culture, he is well known for his stories of shenanigans in the locker room, especially if a player didn’t respect the hierarchy.
In the old school days, you could get touched by your teammates unpleasantly if not compliant, and Shaq has always enjoyed playing the enforcer.
Shaq Was Comfortable In His Birthday Suit
Recently, Shaq told a wild story of giving his younger teammates problems they did not want. Enter then rookie, Dorell Wright, who Shaq chased around the locker room while butt-naked for not adhering to whatever he was asked to do.
“When I’m on a team, I’m the president, I am the emperor. So, when you’re a rookie, do as I fking say, man, or I gotta show you how I get down,” Shaq said on “The Big Podcast.” “This is around the time you really couldn’t put hands on people, but from 1992-2007, I touched a mother**r up in the locker room. That was me, so I told him to do something, and he didn’t do it, and like, he’s also assuming because he’s a jokester, he thought I was playing, so I said, ‘Yo man, I ain’t playing.’
“And I chased him around the locker room,” Shaq said while also revealing that he was “butt naked” while running after Wright in the locker room. “I was butt naked, he was just getting out the shower but I wanted to; Bro, you don’t talk to (me) like that … I’ll knock his f**king head off.”
Shaq Would Be Canceled Today For Such Locker Room Antics
With the way the league is currently set up, this behavior is totally unacceptable by any era’s standards but especially today’s. Shaq brings this up during a time when celebrities are constantly being checked for using their power negatively with victims coming out the woodwork detailing years of abuse.
Shaq has been very transparent about being raised by Sgt. Philip Harrison, aka “Sarge,” who married his mom when Shaw was 2. However, the stepfather raised Shaq with strictness and discipline, which left an indelible impression, contributing to his hierarchal mentality in the locker room and willingness to punish teammates who violated his team’s presidential tenure.
As a child, after meeting his biological father, whom he thought would be a better option to live with than his stepfather, sight unseen, he visited his biological Dad in the projects in Newark, New Jersey, and immediately realized why his stepfather was so harsh on him.
“Yeah, I can get away from this motherf**r [Harrison] now and go live with my other Dad. And we get in the car, and guess where we end up at,” said O’Neal in his documentary Shaq. “The same projects I was born and raised in. So we go in this guy’s house, Joe Toney, and we are sitting, talking. But I’m looking around like, ‘I’m not coming back to this sh-t.’”
So Shaq, raised by a military dad, learned life the hard way, which he feels pushes him into the stratosphere of hardwood success.
Unfortunately for Dorell Wright, who started his NBA career with the Miami Heat from 2004-2010 and won a championship with Big Diesel in 2006, he entered Shaq’s world of teammate pressure and got chased by a naked 7-foot-1 NBA legend for not being compliant.
Miss the good old days of the NBA, much? Nah.
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