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Shaquille O’Neal and Shaunie Nelson, now Shaunie Henderson, were married in 2002. They had four kids together including Shareef O’Neal, who played in the NBA G League in the 2022-23 season.
Shaq and Shaunie were divorced in 2011, but as early as 2007 Shaq had already filed for divorce, but later withdrew it. It was then in 2009 that Shaunie also filed for divorce, effectively ending their marriage.
On the surface, to the public, Shaq and Shaunie O’Neal seemed like a perfectly charming couple, but behind the scenes there was much turmoil.
Shaunie, who is the creator of the long-running Basketball Wives reality show, which began airing in 2010, has a new book coming out on Tuesday, May 7 titled Undefeated: Changing the Rules and Winning on My Own Terms.
In it, she detailed what happened in her marriage to Shaq that led to its demise.
“I enjoyed those sweet early years being a mother and raising my children; my days were always busy with kids and family, and every now and then I got to travel or enjoy a little of the NBA high life. But invisibly, my marriage was beginning to crumble,” Shaunie wrote, the New York Post reports.
“As I’ve written, it wasn’t obvious early on. You know how when you first get sick, and the symptoms are so mild that you’re not even sure you are sick? That’s how things were in the early years. I was busy and happy and didn’t notice what was going on. But as the disease progressed, the symptoms became harder and harder to ignore.”
It was Shaq left the Lakers and the couple moved to Miami that Shaunie realized once and for all that the marriage wasn’t working.
“Take Shaquille’s habit of ‘going missing,’” she wrote. “Our chef did all the grocery shopping. His managers paid all the bills. I took care of the kids. So where was he going in the morning, during the day, and at night? No one works out that often.
“When we moved to Miami, I even heard a rumor that he had a condo in Miami Beach. I started to get suspicious, but he always had an answer, and I could never prove anything. Eventually, I was forced to admit that my family life wasn’t as blissful or perfect as I wanted to believe.”
While Shaquille O’Neal has publicly taken all of the blame for their failed marriage, Shaunie writes in her book that she understands why things happened the way they did.
“He was trying to be a world-famous, thirty-something multimillionaire with thousands of women throwing themselves at him, and people in general begging just to be in his presence, while being a husband and a father at the same time,” she wrote. “How could anyone possibly know how to do that?”