Sports
Scottie Pipen & Shaq’s Son Shareef O’Neal Signed By Lakers
Shaq O’Neal & Scottie Pipen’s Son Shareef O’Neal Signs With Lakers
The Los Angeles Lakers waited until after the NBA Draft to make headlines Thursday night by signing Scotty Pippen Jr to a two-way deal and inviting Shaquille O’Neal’s son, Shareef, onto their Summer League team.
Both players went undrafted Thursday and are hardly assured of following in their famous fathers’ footsteps to basketball stardom.
Shareef revealed that his Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, didn’t want him to enter the draft after his junior year at LSU. “We kind of bump heads about this process,” the younger O’Neal said in a video news conference.
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“He wanted me to stay in school. I wanted to better myself through this. He knows I’m working out with teams. But I’m not going to lie, we ain’t talked about this. I’m kind of just going through it. He didn’t do any pre-draft workouts; he just got straight on the [Orlando Magic], so it’s a different grind.”
The elder O’Neal has a point. Shareef played just 37 games in three seasons at UCLA and LSU. He averaged only 2.6 points per game in college and needed heart surgery during his time at UCLA. Add all of that up and O’Neal is not expected to be drafted on Thursday. Still, he believed he’d gotten all he could out of the college experience.
“He didn’t like that idea at all,” O’Neal added of his father. “It sucks that he didn’t like that idea, but I’m a grown man, I’m 22 years old, I can make my own decisions. It was right in front of my face. I’m not backing up from it. I’m going to go get it if I see it. That’s just how I’m built. I take everything the same way.
“I’m not backing down from nobody. I know he’s an NBA legend, I know he’s my dad, but it was right in front of me, I had to go get it. So, if he likes it or not, it’s not really going to stop me from doing what I want to do.”
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