Shaquille O’Neal’s Son Rushed for Urgent Care After Brother Shareef’s Life-Threatening Surgery Left a Deep-Seated Fear

The banter, social media posts, and jokes are evidence enough that the O’Neal kids are tight. So enduring a medically stressful time was not only emotionally trying for Shaquille O’Neal and Shaunie Henderson, but it also affected their kids deeply. The exes and co-parents had to navigate a delicate time in 2018. Their son, Shareef, had been diagnosed with a congenital heart condition and underwent surgery that December. In her memoir, Undefeated, Shaunie revealed that the turmoil terrified their youngest son in a way they couldn’t fully comprehend.

She narrated the incident that went down when Shaqir was 19, after Shareef’s surgery. Shaunie’s expectation was for the kids to learn to be “cautious and smart” from Shareef’s ordeal and not let it affect them. That was not the case when Shaqir called her, telling him about feeling a pain in his chest. Shaunie stayed levelheaded and asked him if he had injured himself. He told her that the bench press bar hit his chest really hard, and Shaunie figured he’d been injured.

Yet Shaqir was insistent that he had to go to the emergency room. He was at TSU, and it would take Shaunie about 20 minutes to pick him up. Shaqir was apparently so impatient that he asked Amirah, who had transferred to TSU, to drive him to the hospital. Shaunie was concerned her son would back up to the ER and asked him to go to urgent care instead. Yet Shaqir’s paranoia got the better of him.

When Shaunie arrived, Shaqir was terrified, with an IV and monitors hooked to him. Mimi was not on board with his dramatics either. The doctors confirmed that he had a bruised sternum, but Shaqir insisted he was feeling worse. “This was about Shareef, of course. In his mind, the chest pain might be a symptom of the same arterial deformity his brother had,” Shaunie wrote about Shaqir.

The doctors were close to calling a cardiologist, but Shaunie would not encourage Shaqir’s paranoia. She had the doctor release him, and on the way home, she lectured him on distinguishing problems that are two on the emergency scale so he doesn’t scare his family every time he panics. Shaqir would recover in a few days, and he played just fine at TSU before entering the transfer portal this year.

Shareef is thriving after scaring his brother

Given their usual bantering dynamic, Shareef probably gives Shaqir grief for overreacting. He has never let his condition stop him. After being diagnosed with an anomalous coronary artery at age 18, he underwent open-heart surgery. He was back to playing the following year at UCLA. In 2020, he transferred to LSU, his dad’s alma mater, and went to the NBA draft in 2022.

After working out with the Lakers and playing in the NBA Summer League, Shareef signed with the G-League. He’d, however, only play a couple of games and was absent from the court for a year. Shaq himself teased his comeback to the court.

O’Neal is building his own team, Team Diesel, in TBT (The Basketball Tournament), and his first recruit is, unsurprisingly, his son. Shareef. He signed a $1 million contract to play in the tournament this summer and possibly win the million-dollar prize. Hopefully, Shaqir finally learned that heart trouble isn’t that scary now.