The NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal was truly a force to be reckoned with as soon as he stepped onto the NBA court. In his rookie year with the Orlando Magic, Shaq shared how he was excited for the regular season to start. The NBA made its teams play pre-season games before the regular season. In the excitement of going up against the best basketball players in the league, Shaq treated the pre-season games as the prominent games.
Shaq didn’t know there were preseason games
Rookie Shaq realized later that he was not playing in the regular season and was called out by veteran point guard Scott Skiles for the way he treated the pre-season matchups. Recently, in a talk with the NBA open court, he said “The weird thing for me is I didn’t know the difference between pre-season and regular season. I was playing all-out in pre-season, and Scott Skiles said ‘Hey man, Calm down. The season hasn’t started yet.”
Shaq said to Skiles, “What do you mean the season hasn’t started yet, we’re 3-0. We’re in first place in the conference.”
The Superman didn’t get hazed
The “Diesel” averaged 23.4 points, 13.9 rebounds and 3.5 blocks in his first season in the league and earned NBA Rookie of the Year honors. Every rookie coming into the NBA has been hazed by his teammates and the stories they tell are definitely hilarious. But when Shaq entered the league, he made it clear that he especially didn’t want to be hazed by Scott Skiles.
When the “Big Shamrock” was a rookie, Skiles was the team’s starting point guard. He averaged 15.4 points, 9.4 assists and 1.1 steals during the 1992–93 season, but the Orlando Magic missed out on the playoffs.
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On the Drink Champs podcast, Shaq said, “I didn’t get hazed. Shout out to Scott Skiles, he says, ‘Take my bags, rook.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not a newbie, I’m a franchisee.’ These guys said, ‘Hey, man. Just take the bag because we just played.’ I’ll play games with you, but I ain’t carrying, I’m a big man with a big man mentality. I know you could probably fight, but in my mind, I’m not going to let no little man make me”.
