whatever make it means, she was always there. she told me stories of how when i was born, my grandmother, who was a very religious person, would say, out of all my grandchildren, this one s special. - levin: why? - i never got the explanation. - they never explained it. - no. but she said, this one right here, shaquille is very special, and he will be known all around the world. that s what my grandmother told us. all around the world. - you call her your best friend. - yes. there are few people who call their mom their best friend. because i have a panel and what i mean by panel is it s about five people that can that can check me. what i mean by check, like whenever i do something crazy, i ll get checked. my mother is the president of that panel. so whenever i do something crazy, say something crazy, do something i shouldn t do, my mother will call me in the middle of the night and stop it. when she says, stop it, when the queen says, stop it, you gotta stop. okay, i m
- hey, shaquille. - hey, mama. how are you? - how you doing? - thanks for coming. it is such a pleasure meeting you. i mean, the things you did with him are amazing. levin: so we re actually talking about height. he was teased a lot growing up because of his height. - mm-hmm. - you protected him. why not? that s my oldest son. but when he was teased, i had to let him know that he was very, very special unique. we don t wanna call it different, but unique. and i tell young people today, when they look in the mirror, and they re not like the other children, just say to themselves, i am a designer original. so that s what i ve been saying to him his whole life, that he is a designer original. levin: i m curious. i remember wilt chamberlain, he customized his house in l.a. and the toilet seats were bigger and the sinks were bigger, and the ceilings were bigger. did you do anything like that? - no, i never do that. - how come? - you certainly can afford it. - yeah, i can afford it.
cause once i started dunking, like, the day nobody had ever seen me dunk before. i would dunk and hang on the rim and pull myself up, and the crowd would go crazy. i was like, he was right. let s talk a little bit about the partnership between you and kobe. that was something people had never seen before, the power of that partnership. we were the most enigmatic, controversial, dominant, one-two punch in the history of the game. a lot of stuff went on outside the game that never happened inside the game. like, people actually think that kobe bryant and shaq o neal hate each other. that was never the case. there was a falling out for a time when kobe said some pretty harsh things when he was having his difficulties in colorado. he told cops that you paid off women. didn t affect me, i mean, cause i had to, like, sit back and understand what he was going through. like, he was going through a real life situation.
score the licenses so far. a budget customers and some of the states largest cities were t authorize shops in time to get licenses. i am kelly wright, happy new year to you. back to our special. i was a handsome young man, and i m still a handsome young man. - levin: you re with somebody. - my alter ego. that s your alter ego? yes. the one on top is shaquille o neal, and the one with the little smile, that s shaq. so when you were growing up, you were especially tall. you ve always been especially tall. - shaq: super tall. - and you were teased a lot for that. i was teased a lot. a lot of people would say i was dumb, cause if you got a guy that s damn near six foot in the second grade, people think, oh, he s a hold back. like he s been held back four or five times. - they thought you were older. - yeah. i ve seen my mother strangle a bus driver one time
when you were at lsu, before you got there, you had said girls wouldn t even look at you. - that changed. - wouldn t even look at me. it changed when i got on the cover of sports illustrated. - oh, that was it? - yeah, when i got on the cover of sports illustrated, i walked through the quad and girls that would never even look at me, they re, hi, shaquille. hi, big daddy. hey, diesel. my mother would always tell me, watch out for those women. watch out for those women. what did she mean by that? her thing was make sure that a woman loves you for yourself. i was like, i m not interested. yeah, but, women, when you were single and in your 20s, early 20s, they were throwing themselves at you. shaq: they were. announcer: now the lob to o neal. slam dunk! alley-oop. levin: how does being a basketball star affect your view of women when all you see is women throwing themselves at you? it doesn t. i respect women. women sometimes get the bad rap, but it didn t change my view.