Shaquille O’Neal was a man of many talents who realised his rapping and acting dreams within a couple of years after making it to the NBA.
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O’Neal did not have much during his childhood growing up in Newark, New Jersey. He wanted to do and have everything after he made it to the grandest basketball stage of all in 1992. The future 15x All-Star worked his tail off to get there.
The 7ft 1” near 300-pound LSU sensation averaged over 21.6 points, 13.5 rebounds, and 4.6 blocks per game and won rebounding and block titles in his 3-years at college before being selected up as no 1 overall pick in the ’92 Draft by the Orlando Magic.
But the big man’s talents weren’t just confined to a 30-yard court, he could rap and entertain crowds as good as hip hop artists at the time. The future 4x NBA champ was also a movie buff who couldn’t resist a chance to act when he got an offer for the movie Blue Chips just two years after he made it to the league.
But we are here to talk about his second movie, Kazaam.
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Shaquille O’Neal saw $7 million for playing a genie and didn’t mind what the script was
A year after the basketball-based movie, which was his debut in Hollywood, The Big Aristotle got an offer to play a genie who is released from captivity in an old boom box, who could rap and obviously has to perform three wishes for a little kid.
Irrespective of the weak script O’Neal took up the opportunity because $7,000,000 was too much to reject to play a genie when he just earned around $4.8 million working throughout the year and ended up losing the NBA Finals to Michael Jordan and Co. And also working in movies was always his dream.
“I was a medium-level juvenile delinquent from Newark who always dreamed about doing a movie,” Shaq explained in a 2012 interview with GQ. “Someone said, ‘Hey, here’s $7 million, come in and do this genie movie.’ What am I going to say, no? So, I did it.”
That movie might have been one of the biggest stains among the great choices Shaq has made over the years, but that fat cheque definitely made him realize his value.
It must have given him enough boost in confidence and bank balance to become the businessman he became in the upcoming years, while also establishing himself as one of the greatest and most dominant players of all time.
