08/16/2026
Shaquille O'Neal has one of the biggest fortunes in NBA history. But he says the biggest thing he lost was his family, and he knows it was his own fault.
“When you’re real, you know when you mess up,” he told Taylor Rooks. “I live in a 30,000-square-foot house by myself. You don’t think I know I messed up?”
Shaq and his wife, Shaunie, divorced in 2011 after nine years of marriage. Shaq never blamed anyone else.
“My wife was fine as hell. I had it. My babies are beautiful. I’m in here by myself. I messed up.”
In another interview, Shaq talked about how lonely his life became. He would walk into a gym with nobody there. He would walk into his bedroom and find nobody there. No matter how big his house was, the silence was still there.
His biggest lesson: “It’s the ones that don’t know when they mess up that don’t ever make it.”
Shaq has hundreds of millions of dollars and a Hall of Fame career. But all that money could not fill a huge house that was meant for a family that was no longer there.
