Shaquille O’Neal had a very eventful upbringing. As some NBA fans may be aware, O’Neal’s mother reared him alone before giving him a stepfather named Philip Harrison. He has consistently shown his gratitude and appreciation to Harrison for rearing him.
It would have been challenging to raise and discipline a young Shaq. He wasn’t the most responsible youngster growing up, and when he was just 13 years old, he got into serious trouble for assaulting a student from his school. He learned a lesson from these deeds that he would never forget. Let’s investigate more to learn what transpired.
Shaquille O Neal opens up about his troublesome childhood
Reports state that Shaq was exposed by one of his classmates for spitting on the board. O Neal engaged him in combat, warning him that he was about to get into serious trouble. However, after the boy passed out and began experiencing epileptic seizures, things got much worse.
Thankfully, there were no serious injuries, and the youngster recovered completely. Philip Harrison nonetheless severely reprimanded his kid for his behavior in spite of this. O Neal described the exchange in detail in his book Shaq Uncut.
For that, my father beat me mercilessly. He yelled, “You idiot!” after each strike to me. That child could have been killed by you. You would spend the rest of your life in prison.
Harrison must have believed that simply discussing what might have happened wouldn’t be sufficient to influence his stepson. So that Shaq could see what his life would have been like, he made sure that Shaq was given a tour of the prison. Kelly Partners spoke with O Neal, who described how those events happened.
So I once had an incident when I nearly killed this boy. I was around 12 or 13 years old at the time, and I had to make changes to my life ever since. The guard gave me a tour of the jail and said, “If this kid had died, this is where you would have been,” because my father was well-known and the boy didn’t.
O Neal admitted that this kind of reminder would have likely frightened him, but that it was also quite powerful and compelled him to alter his way of living. We are happy to see that the NBA legend‘s experience had a beneficial effect on him and perhaps helped him become a better person.
