Shaquille O’Neal is unarguably one of the most dominant players in NBA history. Earning his bread and butter by asserting his command over the paint, O’Neal recorded more than 28,000 regular season points across his 19-year career. On his 28th birthday, Shaq recorded his career-high in points scored in a regular season game.
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During the game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers, Shaquille O’Neal went off for one of the best performances of his career. Apart from recording a career-high of 61 points, the big man grabbed 23 rebounds. While no one can doubt Shaq’s ability to put such numbers in a game, many may find it hard to believe the reason he was in such form that day.
Shaq had a party planned for his 28th birthday. Not being in the mood to play, the 7ft 1” star was intentionally fouling to get in foul trouble early on in the game. However, his approach changed after seeing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a part of the Clippers’ coaching staff.
Abdul-Jabbar was one of the idols who Shaq looked up to. But, he wasn’t a huge fan of the fact that Kareem was suggesting Keith Closs different ways to guard him. Taking offense to this, Shaq switched gears, elevated his game, and shoved his birthday plans aside.
“I look over to the bench, and I see one of my idols telling Keith Closs how to stop me. I see Kareem saying ‘You gotta do this, you gotta do that.’ Now I’m p*ssed,” Shaq said.
Had O’Neal been flawless from the charity stripe, he could’ve added 9 more points to his total. While 61 points is the highest a player has scored on his birthday, it would’ve been an ever more memorable outing had Shaq reached the 70-point milestone.
Keith Closs didn’t play in the game that Shaquille O’Neal recorded 61 points
Shaquille O’Neal is known for being a personality who takes the liberty of adding his unique twist to any story. A majority of the time, Shaq’s exaggerations are quite funny. However, in this case, the Big Aristotle was caught with a lie.
According to the Los Angeles Lakers legend, he decided to go on a scoring rampage when he learned that the California side was playing Keith Closs and the Los Angeles Clippers. Over the past several years, the Diesel badmouthed Closs for a game that the latter didn’t even feature in and was on the bench.
Several years after the contest, Closs revealed how Shaq was lying. Further, the 7ft 3” legend also had a lot of trash talk directed towards the Hall-Of-Famer.
Since Closs’ comments, Shaq has not spoken about the same incident. However, his silence implies that the Boss’ version of the story was the accurate one.
