“Naked” Fight in the Shower Jaw-Dropped Rookie Udonis Haslem, Reveals Shaquille O’Neal

While rookie hazing has been a common practice in the NBA, the craziest stories usually have Shaquille O’Neal written all over them. What O’Neal once described as a “rite of passage” in the league, went so far that his former teammate Kobe Bryant had to rat him out. While Shaq had to cut it back, it never stopped. And recently, the 4x NBA champ has revealed another instance of rookie hazing involving his Miami Heat teammates Dorell Wright and Udonis Haslem.

Wright was selected as the 19th pick in the 2004 NBA Draft by Miami. Shaq landed in the franchise the same year, but he was a seasoned player by then. “Rookie Dorell was talking, me and him was fighting naked in the shower. And UD (Udonis Haslem) was like, ‘Man, I ain’t about to break up two naked dudes fighting in the shower.’ He just kept talking. I was like, ‘Bro, you say something else to me, young fella… But that’s my boy bro D-Wright,'” Shaq said on his The Big Podcast With Shaq.

This revelation by Shaquille O’Neal came as an answer to if any of the players tried standing up to these pranks. The question emerged after the 52-year-old revisited one of his nastiest pranks on his teammate Lou Amundson during his time with the Phoenix Suns.

“I got to shoot around early, and I saw his (Lou’s) mouthpiece… I was trying to put it in my thing, and it got lost down in that area, and I couldn’t find it… And then right before I take a shower, I was like, ‘Oh, here it is.’ And I just put it back, and I told everybody, ‘Say nothing’ … he put it in his mouth before pregame… He actually wore the whole game,” Shaq recollected the prank on his podcast. Surprisingly, this still does not come as the craziest instance of teammate hazing by O’Neal.

The nastiest allegation against Shaquille O’Neal by a former teammate

Shaq’s former teammate from the Lakers and Heat, Gary Payton, had alleged that the 4x NBA champ used to haze NBA rookies by using a bucket as a bathroom for a week and then dumping the bucket on them. “If one of the rookies would be in the stall, then he (Shaq) would take a bucket and use the bathroom in it for about a week. And then all of a sudden he would pour it on them…” Payton said, appearing on an episode of VLAD TV.

However, it was not as if Payton himself never tried to prank Shaq, as he claims. But they were often limited to stealing his underwear and messing up his pants. But he could never go to the extremes to which Shaq did for his pranks. No wonder Kobe had to rat him out to then-Lakers GM Jerry West, who went off on O’Neal, crucifying him for ruining team chemistry.

However we look at it, Shaq won championships in LA and Miami. Maybe the hazing did lead to better team bonding.