Dwight Howard and Shaquille O’Neal had one of the longest-running beefs in the NBA, but the two have now buried the hatchet. The feud ended rather abruptly, and Howard told the Daily Mail that they had mended fences when they happened to be at the same restaurant in Orlando back in March.
“Overall, he apologized, it was just a misunderstanding, like a lot of things be,” Howard said. “And what happen in life is people, when they have a misunderstanding, they tend to hate it, and they look at it as hate. So when you talk it out, that’s what two grown men supposed to do.
“And we are the biggest men in the world, Supermen,” Howard continued. “And it’s no way that we shouldn’t be fighting crime together, as people would say, instead of fighting each other, especially with him being a big brother, older male figure in my life. It’s all about respecting anyway, give respect you earn respect back.”
O’Neal certainly needed to apologize. For the longest time, this was a one-sided feud, as Howard refused to get into a war of words. He eventually had enough, though, as O’Neal kept firing shots at him. Howard started to fire back, and it looked like this feud would never end. All is good now, though, and Howard once again made it clear he never had any problem with O’Neal earlier.
“I love him, I respect him, and he is someone that I looked up to, because when I watched him play, I was in the 10th, 11th grade, just a baby,” Howard stated. “What is there for me to be upset about with him? What am I hating on him [for]? Why would I hate him? So it was never any beef on my end.
“Now, was I was upset with the things he was saying?” Howard added. “Yeah, because as a man, I feel as though if I have something to say about someone personally, I’m going to take that to them. I wouldn’t go out publicly and say anything like that. So I felt like he was taking a lot of personal jabs at me.”
Most recently, O’Neal stated he doesn’t respect Howard’s championship with the Los Angeles Lakers. Prior to that, Howard claimed that O’Neal had sent him very disrespectful messages. You wished the 53-year-old would just let it go, and he has now.
The two men had crossed paths in that restaurant in Orlando because Howard was in the city for his Orlando Magic Hall of Fame ceremony on March 24, 2025. Not long after, he got some even better news as it was reported he’d be inducted into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.
It was a well-deserved honor, but Howard then surprisingly named O’Neal as one of the men he wanted to walk him out. Considering both men hadn’t publicly spoken about that meeting yet, this seemed like another fruitless attempt on his part to mend fences, but it wasn’t.
O’Neal agreed to walk Howard out and mentioned that they had finally spoken to each other and settled their differences. He told Howard that he doesn’t dislike him and that he was just giving him some tough love over the years.
