Shaquille O’Neal has done some wild things in life. No, we are not speaking about playing Tim Meadows’ 10-foot-tall cop brother with crazy hair in Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2. According to his former colleagues from back in his Lakers days, he collected s*** as a souvenir.
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Shaq has always been known as a prankster. Just a few weeks ago, he and his cousin Bill Bellamy got nostalgic about putting poop in a pal’s Ferrari. More recently, he filled his Inside the NBA crew member Kenny Smith’s car with snow.
It does sound a little bizarre, but from the looks of it, Shaq has a weird obsession with dung. His former teammate Cedric Ceballos has testified to it in the past.
“[Shaq] always would play with feces for some reason,” Ceballos confessed on Byron Scott’s Fast Break. “What are you gonna do with [a guy who’s] 7’1″, 300 pounds that’s trying to put some feces on you? I’m trying to be clean right now for the fans and the kids … but stop playing with s***, man!”
Scott seems to be collecting a team of Shaq’s former colleagues who are happy to share the tales of his escapades with excreta. Garry Vitti, the former head athletic trainer for the LA Lakers from their showtime era to Kobe Bryant’s lat game in the NBA, is the latest to join the crusade.
Scott asked Vitti if the story about Shaq involving Chick Hearn and poop in a bus was true. Whether it was the smell or the sight or the occasion of it all, it certainly did leave an impact on Vitti, because he remembers it like it was yesterday.
“It’s true … There was a plastic bag in the liner for the trash can, so it was already in a plastic bag. He just pulled it out and tied it up, and he told me he’s still got them. He’s got them in a safe. That’s some nasty … You have to understand how bad this was,” Vitti continued.
Shaq had apparently tripped broadcaster Hearn on the bus, which made Hearn, um, defecate in his pants. But that wasn’t enough. No, you would think the it would have been cleaned before they left, right? Wrong!
“It was so bad that we had asked the bus driver … because we were going to Newark. We played the Knicks the night before … and this bus smells so bad … I don’t know if they understood what was happening with the man, but they let him by. I had no idea it was happening until you smell it, right?” Vitti added.
They all had to open the hatches on the bus and bring the luggage down, so Hearn could have a change of clothes. According to Vitti, it was there that they found out Hearn was having a bit of a heart episode.
“So, Garry V, Shaq collected his s*** and kept it as a souvenir?” a curious Scott asked Vitti. Once again, Vitti responded with a firm “yes.”
Vitti confessed to loving and adoring Shaq but claimed that anyone around him needed to be looking over their shoulders around him. Apparently, you couldn’t even leave toothbrushes out in the open because they would eventually find themselves kissing Shaq’s behind.
Well, never meet your heroes, they say. If you are a Shaq fan and reading this, this should be the moment you start listening.
