It’s no secret that being the child of rich and famous parents comes with many privileges that aren’t afforded to most other people, but at least one superstar is proving that they’re still willing to teach their children the value of hard work and personal responsibility: Shaquille O’Neal just announced that his children won’t inherit any of his basketballs so that they can learn to acquire basketballs on their own.
Hell. Yes. Shaq has officially won the award for best celebrity father of all time!
“When I was growing up, nobody gave me any basketballs. I had to find them all myself, either at the store or in the woods,” Shaq explained in an interview that aired on ESPN today. “I want to teach my kids that basketballs don’t just appear out of nowhere, except for one time when I was walking on the beach at the Jersey Shore when I was 12 years old and a basketball washed up out of the ocean. Otherwise, I’ve had to work for every basketball I’ve ever had, and I want my children to do the same.”
This is seriously awesome. If more celebrity parents were like this, the world would definitely be a much better place!
In the rest of the interview, Shaq explained that he still plans to leave each of his children a generous inheritance of one basketball pump each, as well as a drawing of a basketball so that they know what basketballs look like and have an easier time finding them at Dick’s Sporting Goods. It’s definitely more than most people can expect to inherit from their parents, but it’s a mere fraction of what the NBA legend could have left them.
Analysts estimate that over the course of Shaq’s lifetime, he’s acquired over 10,000 basketballs. While most of those basketballs are stored in his garage, some are kept in various overseas storage units, and a few others are at Charles Barkley’s house. There are also rumors that Shaq keeps a stockpile of 13 or 14 emergency basketballs in a cave. Shaq definitely has enough basketballs to provide each of his children with enough to last them for an entire lifetime, but if he did that, they’d never know the value of acquiring basketballs on their own through hard work and by Googling “where do I buy a basketball near me.” He’s bringing up his kids to rely on themselves and not expect anyone to just show up and hand them a basketball.
If you’re not smiling from ear to ear right now, you are officially a monster!
As if this story weren’t already awesome enough, Shaq concluded the ESPN interview by revealing that he plans to dump all his basketballs into the ocean in order to help the environment. It just goes to show that people who have been blessed with huge amounts of basketballs can really do amazing things when their hearts are in the right place!
If you need us, we’ll be spending the rest of the week clapping and cheering for Shaquille O’Neal and his incredible parenting. There’s no doubt that his kids will grow up with plenty of basketballs of their own, and they’ll be thanking their dad for encouraging them to go out there and obtain them through grit and hard work. Other celebrities take note: this is how you raise kids with a strong moral backbone and noble character!