Retired basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal has admitted to making mistakes that cost him his family, and he doesn’t want NFL star Jason Kelce to thread that path when he hangs up his cleats.
The NBA champion’s advice to Kelce comes in the wake of reports about the 36-year-old Philadelphia Eagles center mulling retirement. Asked if he gave Kelce any words of wisdom should he ultimately decide to retire, O’neal in an interview with Page Six said that he told the 36-year-old to “enjoy his family.”
“Don’t be an idiot like me. I made a lot of dumb mistakes and lost my family, so I just told him to enjoy his beautiful wife [Kylie Kelce], enjoy his kids and just, you know, be happy.”
O’neal also told the news outlet that he and Kelce are the same people because both of them are family guys. “Jason is a beautiful guy. I can tell that we’re the same people,” the 51-year-old said. “He has great admiration for his mother and father — as do I. He’s a family guy. He’s happy for his brother [Travis Kelce]. They competed. They fought. It’s the same thing me and Kobe [Bryant] did — that’s how you raise champions.”
The Los Angeles Lakers legend and his ex-wife Shaunie finalized their divorce in 2011 after nine years of marriage. The 51-year-old in a 2022 episode of his The Big Podcast with Shaq admitted he was a “serial cheater” and he lost his wife and their five children as a result of that.
“I was bad. She [his ex-wife] was awesome,” O’Neal also told The Pivot Podcast in a previous interview. “It was all me. We don’t need to talk about what I was doing, but I wasn’t protecting her and protecting those vows. Sometimes you live that double life and get caught up. I’m not going to say it was her. It was all me.”
