Shaquille O’Neal is a force to be reckoned with. Standing tall at 7ft 1″, and weighing just over 360 lbs, Shaq makes his presence felt in every room he walks in. During his days in the NBA, Shaq had a 32-inch vertical leap. Known for shattering backboards and dunking over anyone in his sight, everyone assumed Shaq would stop once he retired. However, turns out that wasn’t the case. His youngest son Shaqir O’Neal went on Instagram and gave us an epic inside view of ‘old’ Shaq in the gym by sharing unseen footage.
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Shaqir O’Neal is a 6ft 7″ forward who is at Texas Southern University. Just like his father and elder brother, he also plays basketball. He recently went on Instagram to share a few throwback photos with his brother Shareef, Kobe Bryant, and his dad.
While doing so, I think he ran across one clip that hadn’t made the rounds on social media before.
‘Old’ Shaquille O’Neal dunked emphatically on his son Shaqir
Being a competitor is something that isn’t like a switch that can be turned on and off. We’ve heard stories about how Michael Jordan used to toy around with his sons Marcus and Jeffrey on the basketball court. On similar lines, we saw footage from Shaqir O’Neal being posted on Instagram, where Shaq can be seen emphatically dunking on his youngest son.
It is absolutely ridiculous to see that Shaq could still reach that height. From the footage, it looks like Shaqir might be 16-18, which means Shaq would’ve been 47-49 years old in this clip. Seeing how he could still channel some of that 32-inch vertical is insane. What’s even more maddening is how his son was nowhere close to interfering Shaq’s attempt. I guess old habits die hard.
Shaq had to cheat to get his first dunk
While we see Shaq as a 7ft 1″ big, he wasn’t always this way. Back in school, Shaq did not have the 32-inch vertical that he entered the NBA with. Because of the same, he couldn’t dunk the basketball.
In order to get his ‘first dunk’ under his belt, he used apple boxes to get some lift and dunk the ball. However, his coach disregarded the same and said it wasn’t a real dunk. Saddened by the same, Shaq put in extra effort, and within a year, he was dunking the basketball without any help.
