Kevin Hart finally revealed the real reason he stopped hanging around Shaquille O’Neal in public, and according to Hart, it all comes down to one thing: Getting manhandled.
Speaking on The Big Podcast with Shaq alongside Adam Lefkoe, Hart hilariously explained how O’Neal constantly picked him up in front of people, including his own kids, leaving him completely helpless.
Adam Lefkoe: “I saw you had said that you stopped hanging around Shaquille O’Neal because he picked you up too much in front of your kids.”
Kevin Hart: “One thousand percent. He does it all the time. Now he stopped because he’s older, so his back can’t handle it. His back is the same, but he would pick me up. He does it and Joel Embiid does it too, so I stopped talking to Joel in public too. It’s not even that they picked me up. There’s nothing worse than somebody picking you up, but you can’t do s**t about it.”
“Even when I’m like, yo man, chill. No, don’t do s**t. He tries to just let it happen. Shaq used to pick me up and be like, ah, what’s up? Then he’d put me down.”
Shaquille O’Neal: “A lot of people don’t know we’ve been friends a long time, but Kevin tried to fight me one time. He tried to fistfight me because he called me one time and said, hey, I need you to do this skit for me. I said, what’s the skit? He said, everybody laughs at you being a cop. I need you to pull me over.”
Adam Lefkoe: “I had Claude and the one thing he gave, it says Kevin was like really offended by everything that happened… What did you do?”
Kevin Hart: “What do you mean? I’m not going to say what he did.”
Shaquille O’Neal: “He called me and said, you motherf***er, what the f**k did you do.”
Kevin Hart: “He manhandled me. An improv thing, and I couldn’t do s**t about it. Everybody’s laughing. Everybody’s dying like it’s a planned bit. It wasn’t a planned bit, man. He did enough. I don’t want y’all to show the clip. I’ve been trying to get the clip deleted from the internet for years. Apparently, it’s on different domain names. I can’t get it taken down.”
Shaquille O’Neal: “I was like, Kev, I’m sorry. He was like, f**k you, man.”
Kevin Hart: “He manhandled me.”
Adam Lefkoe: “You went back to the trailer like, leave me alone, I need some time to decompress.”
Kevin Hart: “I needed a moment. I needed a second.”
Adam Lefkoe: “Everyone was like, great bit, Shaq. That’s the worst.”
Kevin Hart: “This was when the star started bubbling. I was like, yeah man, this is really good. I’m starting to become somebody. Then Shaq came and did what he wanted to do to me. He was laughing. It was funny, man.”
Shaquille O’Neal: “He was going, you’re not a cop.”
Kevin Hart: “That’s what I was like. This cop s**t ain’t real. He’s not even a cop, man. He’s not a cop.”
Shaquille O’Neal: “He did not talk to me for six months.”
Despite all the jokes, the two clearly share a genuine friendship that goes back decades. Their chemistry has made for countless viral moments over the years, especially through NBA media appearances, commercials, and podcasts.
Hart has become deeply connected to basketball culture over the last decade. Beyond comedy and Hollywood success, he frequently appears around NBA stars and major basketball events. Recently, Hart went viral after getting cooked by streamer Kai Cenat in a one-on-one basketball game.
He also hilariously hung up on LeBron James during a livestream after Bryce James called him through Kai Cenat’s stream. Hart also roasted Bryce James for exaggerating his cooking skills during another livestream appearance and later mocked LeBron himself in a DraftKings commercial that exploded online.
Still, no matter how many NBA stars Hart interacts with, nobody seems to embarrass him quite like Shaq. And according to Hart, that is exactly why he stopped hanging around him publicly.
