Shaunie Henderson credits her 2011 divorce from Shaquille O’Neal as the reason she created former VH1 reality show Basketball Wives.
The author and businesswoman—who married Keion Henderson, a pastor, in 2022—spoke about the formation of Basketball Wives on the Wednesday (March 18) episode of podcast Not My Best Moment with KevOnStage.
Henderson, who shares four children with O’Neal, finalized her divorce from the retired NBA player in 2011.
Around the two-minute mark of the video below, Henderson recounted that the show was created out of “uncertainty and desperation” in her personal life at the time.
“I was divorcing, and nobody knew it,” she explained. “But I was preparing to divorce and I just didn't have any stability."
Henderson added that she wasn’t “one of those wives that was saving for a rainy day” because she thought her first marriage would last “forever.”
“I literally left my marriage with nothing but hopes that things would be OK until a judge said it would be OK,” Henderson said. “Basketball Wives was actually developed during that time of just like, ‘Something's got to work.’”
Basketball Wives began airing in 2010 and lasted for 12 seasons until its final air date in July 2025. In January, Henderson announced in an Instagram reel that the show would not be returning.
As for why she created the popular television series, Henderson said that the idea came to her while she was married to O’Neal.
“I saw the Kardashians. I'm like, ‘How hard is this?’” Henderson said. “And people would always come and ask like, ‘What do you guys do as wives? Do you guys all hang out together? What do you do every day?’”
Elsewhere in the episode, Henderson recounted being “unhappy on the inside” during the latter years of her marriage to O’Neal but “masking” her feelings in public.
O’Neal, who has not remarried, has occasionally publicly discussed his marriage to Henderson. During a recent visit on Today, he admitted that he wasn’t a “perfect” husband.
