Shaquille O’Neal, a jovial and friendly person off the court, has always ensured he is there for his teammates when they needed him. However, Shaq’s approachable nature once landed him in a sticky situation when his former teammate, James Posey, was arrested during a night out.
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The Diesel shared how Posey, who was his teammate at the Miami Heat for two seasons, was taken in by law enforcement while sitting in his stationary vehicle.
“So one night Posey was out and he parked his car in front of the club and he had too much to drink. He got into his car but he never actually started it up and drove it.” Shaq wrote in his memoir, Shaq Uncut: My Story.
Shaq wrote that despite never leaving the parking lot, the veteran forward, who was under the influence of alcohol, was arrested. Desperate and low on options, Posey had called The Big Fella, hoping his fame would bail him out of the late-night predicament.
“They arrested him for something called driving under suspicion. He got to the police station, and he called me because I’m friendly with a lot of the law enforcement people,” O’Neal continued. “But I got there too late.”
Unfortunately for Posey, his Hall of Fame teammate’s bond with law enforcement wasn’t of help because the incident was already logged into the system by the cops. His tardiness ended up costing Posey, Shaq admitted.
“They had already fingerprinted him and booked him, so there was nothing I could do,” added O’Neal.
Had The Big Fella showed up in time, Posey could have avoided trouble with the law. However, Shaq’s excerpt in the book left out key details of what transpired that night.
Shaq’s excerpt doesn’t line up with the reported story
While O’Neal claimed that Posey was not driving his vehicle, the ESPN article reporting the 2007 incident narrated it differently. Posey was, reportedly, pulled over by an officer after he slowed down in the middle of the road to talk to other vehicles and pedestrians.
After he stepped out of the car, the cops noticed Posey’s bloodshot eyes and an alcohol-laced odor in his breath, insinuating that he was indeed driving drunk.
Posey was eventually released on $1,000 bail. Evidently, the situation was much more serious than how Shaq had described in his memoir.
