NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal recollects his last days at Miami Heat: NBA News
Apart from all the drastic events in the NBA Labour Dispute, there is a certain guy by the name of Shaquille O’Neal, who has been hitting the headlines in the last month or so.
The reason for that is his new book ‘Shaq Uncut: My Story’.
The excerpts from his book have been creating quite an uproar lately and have so far revealed many facts, which were hidden from the public eye so far.
Over the weekend, some more excerpts from the Shaq’s book were published on ESPN and among them; the most interesting was the description of his last days at the Miami Heat. Shaquille O’Neal played for three complete seasons with
Miami Heat and during that time, he helped the franchise to clinch their first event NBA title in 2006.
In his book, the four-time NBA Champion and three-time Finals MVP made a revelation about his problems with Pat Riley, the Miami heat president, who was then the head coach at the franchise.
Shaq revealed that the decision of trading him was made when he stood up to Riley for being extremely hard on the team. The incident occurred when Riley threw Jason Williams out of the practice for showing up ten seconds late.
Shaq couldn’t take it anymore and confronted Riley. That expectedly didn’t go down well with Riley and months later, Shaq was traded to Phoenix Suns.
After the trade, Pat Riley denied all the rumours that he had some problems with Shaquille and had stated that he adored him as a player.
“I loved Shaq when I got him and I love him today.” Riley said.
However, Shaq has now revealed a totally opposite story;
“When he traded me, Pat denied we were having any problems. He didn’t mean it. He hated the way I called him out. He didn’t like to be challenged. I’m sure he thought I was trying to destroy the culture he created. He was probably
right. I thought his “culture” needed some tweaking.” Shaq said.
The confrontation with Pat Riley was not the only one, Diesel had in his eventful career. The burly centre always did things his own way and was perhaps the most controversial player of his era.
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