Before the championships, the shoe deals, and the Superman tattoos, Shaquille O’Neal was just a massive fifth grader who couldn’t get a sentence out without stuttering — and who coped by throwing spit wads and fists.
“I had to figure out two things,” Shaq told In journalist Graham Bensinger in a brutally honest interview back in 2015. “Either intimidate you or make you laugh. I was always a bully.”
But even bullies have breaking points — and for young Shaq, it came after he got suspended for the millionth time.
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“I threw a spit wad, it hit the chalkboard, it splattered — kid rats me out,” Shaq said. “I go to the office. Three days’ suspension. I already know what I’m getting when I get home.”
His dad didn’t hold back.
“He said, ‘You’re irresponsible… You’re a medium-level juvenile delinquent. And at this pace, you’re going to be nothing in life. I’m not having that in my house.'”
But before he went home to face the music, Shaq had revenge to handle.
“Before I go home, I’m gonna whoop your ass,” he recalled. “So I’m beating this kid up… I’m kicking this kid… and he has an epileptic seizure. Just me and the kid out there. He’s on the ground shaking.”
Shaq panicked. Someone ran over and helped the kid. Shaq ran home, bracing for the fallout.
“My mother decides, ‘You’re too big and too strong. You can’t ever do that again,'” he said. “And that kind of stayed with me. I was like, I don’t want to do that anymore.”
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So he pivoted.
Instead of punching people, he’d try to get them to laugh.
“I was always a class clown, funny guy. So now, let me just do this a lot to get people to like me,” Shaq said. “And I just stuck with that rather than being a bully.”
But even when the fighting stopped, the insecurity didn’t. Kids still made fun of him — for his size, for his speech, for being different.
“They used to call me ‘Shaquille Sasquatch,’ ‘big African,’ ‘big dummy,'” he said. “I stuttered when I talked. I was very, very shy. I always had self-doubts about myself and just never thought I could do anything.”
That changed junior year of high school — thanks to an unlikely hero.
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Right before the state tournament, Shaq was flunking government class. “I got a 68. I’ve got one test left,” he said.
That’s when the quiet, nerdy kid everyone picked on approached him at lunch.
“He came up to me and said, ‘Man, appreciate it. I hear you’re having some problems in government. I could help you out,'” Shaq said.
Shaq stared at him. “I was like, what, you want to tutor me?”
He did. Every day after school.
“And the way he tutored me, I was like, this really is not that bad,” Shaq said. “But because I had self-doubts and felt that I wasn’t smart, I didn’t even look at it. I was like, I’ll never pass anyway.”
But he did pass. And that one tutoring session turned into a lifeline.
“Whenever I had problems I was like, ‘Yo, I need help in chemistry.’ He was always there for me.”
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Looking back, Shaq gives that so-called “geek” full credit.
“A geek saved my life,” he said. “That’s when I realized that nerds and geeks are very cool people. And it also taught me another valuable lesson — you don’t always have to judge people for who they are and what they do.”
Turns out, leaning into geekdom paid off—big time.
These days Shaq isn’t just a nerd—he’s a tech-savvy one with an estimated net worth of $500 million. He was an early backer of Google and got in on Ring—before Amazon snapped it up for about $1 billion . On the franchise side, he owns a Krispy Kreme in Atlanta, a handful of Papa John’s restaurants, and even launched his own chicken chain, Big Chicken.
So yeah, the guy who once stuttered and threw spit‑wads in class now throws millions into Silicon Valley—and serves donuts while he’s at it.
“Now I’m a nerd,” he said. “And I’m a geek.”
Just a very rich one.
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