Shaq picks his favorite championship team: “We were a bunch of misfits”
Four-time NBA champion Shaquille O’Neal celebrated his favorite team in a special gala on Monday night.
Few names are as synonymous with the game of basketball as Shaquille O’Neal, a 19-year NBA icon who represented six teams during his career.
‘Shaq’ found greatest success with the Los Angeles Lakers, winning three championships, but he has picked another of his teams as his all-time favorite. Speaking at the team’s 20th anniversary celebration on Tuesday night, O’Neal picked the 2006 championship-winning Miami Heat team as his favorite.
“I’m going to throw a word out there that’s probably going to shock the basketball world,” O’Neal said. “It’s my favorite one because we were not supposed to win and it was one that I was pressured to win. I needed to get it done before the other guy got his fourth.”
The “other guy” that O’Neal referenced was no other that fellow Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant, who he had played alongside for the streak of three consecutive titles with the Lakers. Although both players are ranked as all-time greats, they famously did not get along and O’Neal was eventually traded to Miami.
Shaq’s love for “bunch of misfits”
When O’Neal left the Lakers in 2004 he did so to claim a team for his own, and move away from a structure that he felt was unfairly geared towards Bryant. Despite intense interest from the Dallas Mavericks, O’Neal was eventually traded to the Miami Heat and he would go on to transform the team’s fortunes.
“We were a bunch of misfits that used to argue and fight and do things very untraditionally,” said O’Neal on Tuesday. “But we never not got along and that’s what made it special.”
Forming a partnership with young star Dwayne Wade, O’Neal helped the team to the NBA championship in 2005/06 to win his fourth ring. Twenty years on from that title, O’Neal was back in South Florida to celebrate the team that won an unlikely championship.
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