Shaquille O’Neal reminisces about his first big spending spree. Then he discusses how his father influenced his career. Plus, find out how Halle Berry helped Shaq’s stutter.
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00:00 (audience cheering)
00:03 I mean, I was watching you with the audience
00:05 and they're up on the stands already.
00:06 - Yes.
00:07 - And you're a big guy.
00:08 (audience laughing)
00:11 - How's it going?
00:12 - Very well.
00:13 So before he walked out here,
00:14 he confided that his mom Lucille sent her regards.
00:18 - Yes.
00:18 - Is that true?
00:19 - Yes, she loves your show.
00:20 (laughing)
00:21 - I love when moms torture their boys.
00:23 (audience applauding)
00:24 - Everybody loves your show.
00:25 - Well, you're very kind to say that.
00:27 So a lot of nicknames you shack.
00:28 They call you the big Aristotle, right?
00:30 Superman for obvious reasons, Shaq Fu, right?
00:33 Shaq Daddy.
00:35 And the thing about Shaq Daddy I like
00:36 is that it makes that sort of gets you grooving.
00:37 But the part that I didn't know,
00:39 that I'm most proud of,
00:40 is your other nickname is Doctor.
00:42 - Yes.
00:44 I went back to school because I love my mother very much.
00:48 And I promised her that I would continue my education.
00:50 So I left school.
00:52 (audience cheering)
00:56 I left school early.
00:58 And then she would just call me every week.
00:59 Okay, you had a good game.
01:01 You did this, you did that.
01:02 But I need a degree.
01:03 So I got my bachelor's.
01:05 And I went and got my master's.
01:06 And then she said,
01:07 you know we don't have any doctors in the family.
01:09 So I said, I'll do it.
01:11 So I attended Barre University.
01:12 Took me five years to get my PhD.
01:14 And it was a wonderful day.
01:15 (audience cheering)
01:17 - Is Lucille proud of you anymore now?
01:19 - Yes, she calls me every time
01:21 and tells me she's proud of me.
01:22 But guess what?
01:23 - What?
01:24 - One day she called me and asked me to borrow some money.
01:26 And I said, why?
01:27 She wanted to go back to school.
01:28 So she got her bachelor's, her master's,
01:30 and her doctorate also.
01:31 (audience cheering)
01:33 - I love it.
01:34 Give me a hand here.
01:36 You got all these cool nicknames.
01:38 I'm just Doctor.
01:39 Give me a nickname.
01:40 I wanna have a nickname from now on.
01:41 - You ready?
01:42 - Yeah, I'm ready.
01:43 - Doctor Oz.
01:44 (audience laughing)
01:47 Genius, right?
01:48 - That's good enough.
01:49 - You like that?
01:49 Doctor Oz.
01:50 - All right, I'll take it.
01:52 Now are you really running for sheriff in Atlanta?
01:53 - I thought about it to doing it in 2020,
01:56 but I'll probably wait 'til 2024.
01:58 I wanna be the one that brings law enforcement
02:00 and community closer together.
02:02 'Cause right now we're miles apart.
02:06 - There we are.
02:07 - And I live in a small county outside of Atlanta
02:10 called Henry County.
02:11 And I've been mentioning to people,
02:14 people have been wanting me to run in 2020,
02:16 but I'm too busy right now.
02:18 So when I become a sheriff,
02:19 I wanna just be able to sit down and be sheriff.
02:21 Right now I got too much stuff going on.
02:23 So I don't wanna get voted in
02:25 and then cheat the people.
02:27 - Well, it's honest of you
02:28 to realize where your love is right now
02:30 and when it will be ready.
02:31 So let me go back in time a little bit,
02:33 'cause I'm curious how Shaq became Shaq.
02:35 So you get drafted,
02:38 you get a celebrity endorsement,
02:39 even before that, I think.
02:40 You spent a million dollars, if I understand, in an hour.
02:44 - Yep, in one hour.
02:46 - I mean, what did you buy?
02:47 - I bought myself a car, came home.
02:50 My father wanted a car, bought him a car,
02:52 bought my mother a car, bought some jewelry,
02:54 bought a couple of suits, and then I got a call
02:56 from the bank the next day.
02:58 He said, "Mr. O'Neal, you need to come see me."
03:01 And we had a long conversation.
03:02 He said, "You know, about 50% of athletes
03:05 "when they're done playing have nothing,
03:07 "and I don't want you to be like that."
03:08 He showed me what was going on
03:10 and he showed me I was 150 in a hole.
03:13 And then I looked at him, I said,
03:14 "Who the hell is FICA?"
03:15 (laughing)
03:18 FICA took all my money.
03:19 - I understand that your dad,
03:21 who was a drill sergeant in the Army,
03:23 was partly responsible for shaking you and saying,
03:26 "Son, I need you to have discipline
03:27 "in more things than just sports.
03:29 "You need to have it for money."
03:30 And that's the biggest problem
03:31 I think we face in America now.
03:32 Half the population doesn't have $400
03:35 when they need it in a crisis, so it creates anxiety.
03:37 - Yeah, he just, he always taught me
03:40 to just have things to fall back on,
03:41 just in case basketball didn't work.
03:43 Like, I would call him and say,
03:44 "How'd you like the game I played?
03:46 "It's a good game, but what you gonna do
03:47 "if you blow your knee up?"
03:48 Growing up as a medium-level juvenile delinquent,
03:52 I was always on punishment.
03:53 I was just able to sit there and dream.
03:55 And then, luckily, and by the grace of God,
03:58 I was able to accomplish each and every one of 'em.
04:00 - Why do you say you were a juvenile delinquent?
04:02 - I was, I used to get in trouble, Dr. Ross.
04:05 (audience laughing)
04:07 I don't think I could talk about it
04:08 'cause the statute of limitations ain't up on some of this.
04:10 (laughing)
04:12 No, I just, I mean, I was a follower instead of a leader,
04:17 and my father quickly convinced me to be a leader.
04:19 Just, you know, little stuff, breaking into cars,
04:22 stealing bubble gum, just a lot of, you know,
04:25 neighborhood fights, you know, just a little,
04:27 lot of childish, crazy things.
04:30 - Was your issue with stuttering part of that at all?
04:33 Was there insecurity with that?
04:35 - I don't know why I stuttered.
04:36 And you know how I got rid of my stuttering?
04:38 - No.
04:39 - I saw a picture of Halle Berry one day.
04:41 (audience laughing)
04:41 True, it just stopped.
04:43 - Made you breathless?
04:44 - Yeah, no, this is what happened.
04:46 I saw her in a movie, I was in college,
04:48 and I wrote her a letter, and she wrote me back.
04:50 - She did?
04:51 - She wrote me back, and I read the letter to myself,
04:53 and I was like, I don't stutter anymore.
04:56 So, Halle Berry, I love you.
04:58 (laughing)
05:00 (audience applauding)
05:04 True story.
05:05 - Is it really?
05:06 - Yeah, true, I just stopped.
05:08 - I've never heard that before.
05:10 You should be able to work at it, they've got a--
05:12 - No, I didn't take any speech therapy, none of that.
05:15 I just, you know, I was always shy, I always kept to myself,
05:18 but I saw one of her movies, I wrote her,
05:20 she wrote me back, and I read it.
05:22 - Was it because she wrote you back,
05:23 or was she saying in the letter that you stopped?
05:24 - No, she just said, I'm glad you're a fan of mine,
05:27 I'm also a fan of yours, good luck in the NBA.
05:29 I think when I read it, I read it with such confidence,
05:32 and when I read that, I was in the mirror,
05:33 and I was saying, look at what Halle Berry wrote to me.
05:36 (laughing)
05:38 And I read it, and then after that, it was just,
05:41 it was over.
05:42 - Speaking of love, your son, Sharif.
05:45 Future superstar, we think.
05:47 - Yes.
05:48 - In the NBA, playing for UCLA,
05:49 everything is going great, on the fast track,
05:51 just like his dad, and then you get this scary medical news,
05:54 which I'm sure stopped you, flattened your tracks.
05:57 - We all were nervous, but, you know,
06:01 I try to teach my children, don't worry about the problem,
06:04 worry about the solution.
06:06 So we know what the problem was,
06:07 so the solution was to get surgery.
06:10 And right before the surgery, I could see that he was down,
06:12 and I realized for me, when I was a youngster,
06:15 the thing that always got me to the next level was stories.
06:18 So I just told him a story, I said,
06:19 "My man, I've never had heart surgery,
06:22 "but I've had 10 other surgeries.
06:24 "I know you're scared, it's okay to be scared,
06:26 "but once you lay down on that table,
06:28 "and they introduce you to the anesthesia,
06:31 "you're not gonna remember anything."
06:32 So I said, "If you're scared, be scared, that's fine,
06:35 "but don't worry about it."
06:36 So after the surgery, he's like, "Dad, you're right."
06:39 - So he posted this great image of himself.
06:42 - Yes.
06:43 - It just says, "First time seeing my scar, #ZipperBoy."
06:46 There's Sharif lying on his bed.
06:47 So I'm a heart surgeon, as you know.
06:49 - Oh, I didn't know that.
06:50 - Yeah, that's where I'm--
06:51 (audience laughing)
06:51 Go, go, go. - You are?
06:52 - Yeah, I do that kind of surgery.
06:54 It's the best, I think it's the best job in the world.
06:56 - I thought you were just a regular doctor.
06:58 You're a real doctor, that's awesome.
06:59 (audience laughing)
07:01 I'm just playing, I'm just playing.
07:03 - Thank you for watching.
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