Shaquille O’Neal is known to people as the gentle giant – but during his playing days, he was a completely different person.
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To the kids of today, and people with short-term memory, Shaquille O’Neal cannot be seen as anything other than the guy paying off other people’s bills. He’s made a huge fan following for himself, and his past seems to be forgiven.
Originally a bad boy, despite having a strict father, Shaq had connections in all the wrong places. Associated with the “Crips” of LA, the blue and the red side are in a perennial feud with each other. Shaq chose the closest color to purple and rode with them.
There are allegations that he even pointed out to his members about the easy targets, and got a few of his peer’s houses robbed. That is such a low blow, given he knew most of them came from little to no means.
The best part about this association? O’Neal took to the stands and testified against the same members, making sure all of them were behind bars. He had bars for his rap and got his homies behind bars. He hoped they dropped their bars (of soap) that cannot be confirmed.
Shaquille O’Neal was in some deep stuff with the gangs of LA – he had a few huge allegations on him too
His time with LA was not all championships and good chemistry with Kobe Bryant. He lived a life outside of the court, and that was murky. It got so bad, that it looked like Shaq got his friends in the Crips to hunt down a man who held some intimate information on him.
But the funniest part of this whole shebang is that Shaq became a law enforcer himself, after snitching on his friends from his time in LA. That could be a little bit of a power move, but a sneaky one nonetheless.
The gangs of Compton in LA are notorious. They’ve had high-profile victims, and almost anybody famous does come into their radar. Shaq was one of the few who managed to escape relatively free, but even he had a few mishaps.
This might be one of the reasons why the big man was the one who got traded, and not Kobe. His influence of him on gangs and vice versa seemed to only get stronger, and the team wasn’t ready to see their star man succumb at some point.
