Shaquille O’Neal SHOCKINGLY reveals throwing away Olympic gold medal on the road

The United States' men's basketball team won the gold in the 1996 Olympics.

Shaquille O’Neal SHOCKINGLY reveals throwing away Olympic gold medal on the road

Shaquille O'Neal

Aside from being a multiple-time NBA champion with two teams, Shaquille O’Neal is a two-time Olympic Gold medal champion with the United States. He revealed a shocking story of how he threw away his gold medal out of his car window out of frustration.

This revelation was made during his recent podcast, “The BIG Podcast with Shaq.” He narrated the reason for doing that, stating that he was upset that he had to play second fiddle to veteran player David Robinson during the Final of the 1996 Olympics, and he didn’t feel he had earned the medal; hence, he threw it away.

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In the gold medal game, Lenny Wilkens says, ‘This is probably David Robinson’s last game. So he’s gonna get more minutes.’ But he didn’t play me at all… I was so pissed I threw my gold medal out the car window. I threw it away on the highway.
Shaquille O’Neal said

At the time, Shaquille O’Neal was an upcoming and emerging star in the league, while Robinson was a highly respected veteran and, by all means, should have been ahead of O’Neal. But to O’Neal, Robinson was just another player he aimed to be better than and, thus, wasn’t willing to let his spot go so quickly.

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However, losing a medal is not something that happens every day. Still, for a player like Shaq, who dared to let go of something as treasured as an Olympic gold medal, it only shows the kind of person he was growing up as a pro basketball player.

Shaquille O’Neal almost fought with his dad for deciding to go pro

The talent of Shaquille O’Neal would have been deprived had his father succeeded in discouring him from going pro. He made it known on his podcast that his dad was against the idea even though his going pro would have taken them away from their financial challenges at the time. 

He said nope, and I said why? He said bro, we’ve been broke for 17 years; we can be broke for 18 years.
Shaquille O’Neal said

DJ Diesel just wanted to give his family a better life and, at a point, had to study business while in his junior year before they finally accepted him to proceed with his basketball dreams. Now, he has finally understood the importance of a good education.

Shaq had a glorious career as a basketball player and is even doing great as a TV analyst, with his bromance with Charles Barkley dragging viewers toward his show. He ended his career with 23.7 PPG, 10.9 RPG, and 2.5 APG.

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