While he was playing with the Tigers, Shaquille O’Neal was studying business at LSU. He left college early to enter the NBA in 1992. Fast forward to 2023, he’s at TechCrunch Disrupt, talking about his investment in an edtech startup, Edsoma. And he used the opportunity to tell other entrepreneurs and investors there’s no fast track to success like his.

Not one to be taken lightly, Shaq got a college education to inspire those who look up to him. When a class quota was in the way, he got a few friends involved. Decades later, the $400 million man gets to brag about his accomplishments.

Shaquille O’Neal’s road to making his parents proud

The Big Aristotle resonated his views on pro-athletes and education at TechCrunch Disrupt. Not wanting to be another statistic, Shaquille O’Neal upgraded himself. He gushed his parents were prouder of his post-retirement achievements more than his on-court accolades. Speaking about the current generation expecting instant success, the 2000 NBA MVP said,

“I have to be the one to break the news to them that it doesn’t really work like that. And then I also tell them, if you’re going to get it quickly, you still have to educate yourself.”

Shaq would know. When he entered the NBA, 65% of pro-athletes went broke after their careers ended. That number has tragically grown to 79%. O’Neal didn’t want to fall in that percentage as much as his parents. A military veteran, Shaq’s stepfather, Phillip Harrison, valued education above all else.

“Everything I did, they were never impressed,” he revealed. They weren’t impressed if he scored 40 points or made seven free throws in a row. For instance, “‘Dad, I shot a movie called Kazam.’ ‘Oh, that movie sucked. When you’re going back to school?'”

Shaq narrated while simultaneously dissing Kazam at Disrupt. Harrison’s tricks worked. Six years into the NBA, O’Neal went back to LSU and got his bachelor’s degree. He was already moving in business circles by then. Yet, he couldn’t shed the basketball player image at tech conferences.

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The NBA legend told the room that business folks would greet him and then talk to his entourage throughout a pitch. “So I was like, ‘oh, you think I’m one of those dumb athletes.'” 

Perhaps these type of comments added to his drive to get his MBA.

Shaq’s online MBA classes

The story is a unique one. O’Neal was playing with the Los Angeles Lakers then and won his first three championships.

He contacted the University of Phoenix which has a campus in LA. He didn’t want to study online but the school said he’d need at least 15 people to make up a class. So Shaq gathered 15 friends within a week and paid for all of them to get their masters with him.

Even though it was an online program, Shaq and his friends studied in class and Shaq earned his MBA in 2005.

The NBA pro was the first college graduate in his family. His parents were naturally proud. “My mother was crying. She said, ‘we don’t have any we don’t have any doctors in our family’ like it was a challenge.” So Shaq went and got his Ed.D from Barry University and is now Dr. Shaquille O’Neal.

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