Shaquille O’Neal admits that his kids didn’t talk to him for a long time after his divorce from Shaunie Henderson.
During a recent sitdown with T.I. for the expediTIously podcast, Shaq reflected on what he learned from being married. “I learned that I know better than to be out here bullshitting,” he said around the hour and seven-minute mark. “Sometimes you just get caught up. But we know better.”
The former NBA star then brought up his relationship with his seven kids and how the divorce impacted them. “In all of that, I’m just happy and blessed that they've forgiven me. Because me and my babies didn’t talk for a while,” Shaq admitted. “I understood that, but now we’re starting to get closer. I’m teaching my boys to be better than me. Papa was a Rolling Stone. You don’t need to be like me.”
Shaq then gave the mothers of his children a shoutout, saying that he loves them for “forgiving me and not killing me.” He then joked that he’d be getting married again in three years.
Shaq’s comments about his relationship with his children due to the divorce come months after Shareef O’Neal addressed the same topic on Heir Time with Reginae Carter. On the show in November, Shareef opened up about how he and his siblings felt at the time.
"The first few years it was pretty hard," Shareef admitted. "We were all too young to kind of understand what's going on. Mom and dad aren't going to be together. It wasn't like a 'choose a side' thing."
"My mom [was] like, 'If you guys wanna go with your dad, go ahead.' My dad's like, 'If y'all wanna go with your mom, go ahead,’” Shareef continued.
Shareef then explained how much he loves how his parents have handled the parenting situation in the midst of their split. "I think the thing that I respect out of my parents both is how well they co-parent," Shareef said. "They never come around and it's a problem. My mom is remarried now. She can bring her husband around and dad [can] dap him up and have a conversation. So, I respect them both for never putting the stress on us."
In her 2024 memoir Basketball Wives, Henderson reflected on being married to Shaq, revealing that she was more “in love with the idea of being married to the man” that she had children with than Shaq himself. She’s since married pastor Keion Henderson.