Shaquille O’Neal is one of the greatest dozen or so basketball players of all-time and a renowned philanthropist and businessman. But he’s also a guy with a disturbing affinity for fecal matter.
Yes, you read that right. Shaq loves sh*t. The stories of him pranking people not with a whoopee cushion or a can of shaving cream but with something that came out of his big ol’ backside are almost too numerous to count.
Cedric Ceballos was Shaq’s teammate for a short while in 1996-97. That was the Big Diesel’s first season in L.A. after leaving the Orlando Magic in free agency and Ceballos’ third before he was traded back to the Phoenix Suns, his first team. Though they only played together a short time, it left an impression on Ceballos, though not necessarily in the right way.
On his recent appearance on Byron Scott’s Fast Break, the 11-year NBA vet was asked to recall the best locker room prank he ever witnessed or pulled. Naturally, he told two stories about the league’s largest, most notorious and most disgusting prankster, Shaq Daddy himself.
The first was simple yet revolting. Ceballos’ locker was close to the bathroom Shaq used to do his business, and he remembered how Shaq would, for some reason, hold his sh*t in his hand and show it to anybody who passed by. Why, Shaq, why?
“He always would play with feces for some reason,” Ceballos remembered exasperatedly. “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 sh*t, man!”
The second story is somehow even worse. Byron Scott detailed how Shaq once tripped legendary broadcaster Chick Hearn on the team bus, causing him to have an unfortunate accident in his pants. According to legend, Shaq then followed Hearn into the bathroom and collected the evidence in a plastic bag, because, as Scott said, “He seems to have some type of fetish with sh*t.”
Ceballos said that he had heard about the bag part of the story, but he was unable to confirm or deny its veracity. He says that he was there when the tripping incident occurred, though. “Why would you go and get the man’s drawers?!” Ceballos wondered. We don’t know, Ced. We really don’t know.
Recently on Shaq’s own podcast, he and his cousin, comedian Bill Bellamy, reminisced over the time that he scooped some poop and put it in a friend’s brand new Ferrari.
That’s more than enough Shaq sh*t stories for one day, but if there’s one silver lining to this otherwise brown cloud, it’s the thought of Shaq pulling something similar on Stephen A. Smith when Inside the NBA shifts to ESPN next year. The NBA, where amazing happens.
