Shaquille O’Neal is one of the greatest players to have ever stepped foot on an NBA court and at his peak, he was perhaps the most dominant force we had seen in the league in a very long time. He won 4 NBA championships, 3 Finals MVPs, an MVP, and a whole lot more in what was an unbelievable career, but the crazy thing is that Shaq probably should have achieved a lot more than that, which speaks to how great he was.
While O’Neal was and will always be incredibly passionate about basketball, music is another big passion of his. Shaq started DJing back in the 1980s and released his first rap album in 1993. O’Neal’s interest in music would eventually see him cross paths with one Michael Jackson.
Shaquille O’Neal Revealed The Story About When Michael Jackson Wanted To Buy His House
While one can argue how good that album Shaq released really was, it did reach platinum status a year later, so it did sell well. As O’Neal gained some fame as a rapper, Michael Jackson gave him the opportunity to feature alongside him as a guest rapper on “2 Bad”, a song that was part of Jackson’s “HIStory” album in 1995. The two got along well and on a recent episode of the Drink Champs podcast, O’Neal revealed a hilarious story about Jackson showing up at his house in Orlando.
(starts at 47:08 mark):
“MJ showed up at my house and tried to buy my house in Orlando. Yeah, he just showed up at the door… So I had this big 70,000 square miles (house) and I had a bed that fits 50 people. He looked around the house, he said ‘I want to buy the house.’ and I’m like ‘It’s not for sale.’ Then I went to his house, this dude had a real zoo at his house. Not (just) animals, this dude had a real zoo.”
It is hilarious how Jackson just showed up and asked to buy the house, but then again, you wouldn’t expect anything different. That part about Jackson having an entire zoo at his house is well known, and it also had amusement parks as well as trains. Shaq wasn’t the only NBA player that Jackson had featured alongside him either, as Michael Jordan was featured on his song “Jam” in 1992 as well. Some footage was also doing the rounds recently of the two of them playing 1-on-1 on the set back then.
During this episode, Shaq also came to the defense of his former teammate LeBron James as he went at people who claim LeBron doesn’t have a killer instinct. Shaq asked how someone with 38,000 points can’t have a killer instinct and that is one way to shut down the critics.
