Fans of Shaquille O’Neal didn’t like seeing this. The 51-year-old NBA legend went to Twitter on Sunday to post a photo of him in a hospital bed. In the Tweet, O’Neal wrote he’s “always watching” his TNT colleagues Ernie Johnson and Candace Parker while adding “miss y’all.”
According to TMZ Sports, O’Neal was simply having surgery on his hip. The surgery was a success and he’s already on the mend. It’s not clear when O’Neal will return to television but when talking about the procedure in an episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, he said he was thinking of coming back on April 16, which is the start of the NBA playoffs.
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Man fans on Twitter were wishing O’Neal a fast recovery. One fan wrote, “Stay safe and praying for speedy recovery and hope you read this.” Another fan added, “Shaq we are praying for you! You are one the nicest, honest, generous, and of course talented athletes in the NBA of all time and I hope all goes well! God has got your back. We love you Shaq.” The hip surgery comes a few months after O’Neal revealed his big weight loss.
“I lost 40 pounds,” O’Neal said to Nischelle Tuner of Entertainment Tonight in December. “I need to lose about 20 more, but impressive. Imma get real chiseled up and do an underwear ad with my sons.” O’Neal went on to say his goal is to lose 20 more pounds by March 6 which is his 51st birthday. “Shirt off. Chiseled,” he continued. O’Neal, who has won four NBA championships in his career explained why he needed to lose weight.
“I got a couple people involved — It’s all about eating right. I got some blood work done, a friend of mine called me and said, ‘You’re fat,’ and she gave me this guy’s name, and he did some blood work, and you know, ’cause I was the athlete — I wasn’t a salad eater. I won’t pay attention to any of that. I don’t care about none of that. I didn’t know what the difference between a carb and a protein, at 50 years old I never knew. So, he was saying you can’t do this, you can’t do that, more vegetables, my iron’s low. And once I just started changing those certain things, it dropped.”
