Calling Shaquille O’Neal the most dominant player the NBA has ever seen is boring. It may be true, but it’s been so overused that the big fella’s other achievements get swept under the rug. Shareef O’Neal also voiced his opinion on his father’s underrated achievements and confessed he doesn’t reveal that his dad was an NBA player when meeting new people.
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Appearing on the ‘At the Buzzer’ podcast, Shareef said that he uses his father’s film and commercial roles to try to give people an idea of who he is. Shaq’s time in the NBA, and after it, has been full of guest appearances in movies, talk shows, and TV commercials.
But despite his lengthy Hollywood resume, while respectfully ignoring Kazaam and Steel, O’Neal’s role in Grown Ups is one of his most memorable stints and it seems his son Shareef feels so too.
Shareef mentioned how during an interaction with a woman, he used Shaq’s appearance in the movie Grown Ups to try to explain who his father was.
“I just always try to go to like a commercial or a movie he was in like. Think the last one, the lady, she was like ‘I don’t recognize him’, and I was like ‘Have you ever seen Grown Ups or Grown Ups 2?’ and she’s like ‘Yea’. I’m like ‘You know the really tall cop dude like he’s big, dark-skinned?’ and she’s like ‘Yea he’s the funny character!’ and I’m like ‘That’s my dad.'”
He added that he doesn’t bank on his dad’s fame to introduce himself either. When the host wanted to know how Shareef would introduce himself to someone who’s never heard of him, he claimed he’d just do it normally. His tone made it seem he’d rather let them find out whenever they want, rather than be obnoxious about how famous his father is.
“I don’t mention, if people don’t know who I am, I don’t mention it at all like I don’t never tell them. They just gotta find out when they find out so, I just tell them who I am.”
Shareef has always been hesitant to reveal his father’s identity to the people who don’t know the NBA. In fact, he even actively hid it to ensure that people wouldn’t treat him any differently as a child.
Shareef hid his father’s identity
In an early 2023 interview, Shareef revealed that at school, he tried to hide who his father was so that his friends and teachers wouldn’t treat him differently from other students. His mother Shaunie Henderson attended all the parent-teacher meetings, and he claimed that they planned them meticulously.
“The thing about me that not a lot of people know is nobody knew who my dad was at none of my schools until I was about 15 or 16 years old. All the parent-teacher conferences, it was just my mom who came. It was a set plan. We just kind of hid it so people didn’t treat us differently.”
He mentioned successfully hiding Shaq’s identity till he was almost 16, and people only found out after the big fella attended a basketball game that Shareef was playing in.
“But when basketball season started coming around, people started filming the games. There was a small game, 8 o’clock in the morning, my dad came and someone happened to film him. They posted it on YouTube and that was it after that everyone knew.”
Of course, growing up as Shaq’s son meant he had a lot of perks, including world-class basketball coaching. He pursued the same career path as his father, but unfortunately, an open heart surgery in 2018 meant he never made it to the big leagues. Shareef currently plays in the G-League, for the Stockton Kings, who are the affiliate side of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.
