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Gary Payton on Framing Shaquille O’Neal’s Underwear in His House

Published 02/26/2022, 11:00 AM EST

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Shaquille O’Neal was known to be one of the most dominant players in NBA History, but he was also known to be a prank master. He used to play all kinds of pranks and tricks on his teammates. But once in Miami, it was one of his teammates’ turn to take revenge on Shaq.

Shaq was traded from the Los Angeles Lakers to the Miami Heat after he had a feud with Kobe Bryant. He had a great first year as he came second in the MVP voting. But the Heat lost to the Detroit Pistons in the eastern conference finals. The following they made several acquisitions and one of them was signing Gary Payton to their team.

Payton was in his swansong years and he wanted a championship before he retired. He said that everyone used to play jokes on the team and Shaq was a Jokester. He recalls a funny incident that left Shaq dumbfounded.

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Shaquille O’Neal used to throw towels out

Payton tells that once he took Shaq’s shorts and hid them. He adds, “So I said, I gotta get him. So I got his drawers one day, and I took them and he had to wear underneath them underneath his thing and be freeballing all the time, right.”

“But we messed up his pants, so he didn’t have no drawers because he was trying to find his drawers and I had them, you know what I’m saying. So he had to ride a towel around him and Shaq don’t care, he’ll go outside with the towel on, everything.”

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“He was just doing all kinds of. He’d get in his truck, ride around the thing and then he’d throw the towel out and he’d be freeballing. So I used to keep all the shorts and pair of drawers and all that stuff.”

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Payton says that he still has those drawers back in his home. He had reportedly framed it in memory. This prank was one for the ages, but Shaq didn’t seem fazed by it. He really didn’t care for it, and he went to play pranks on his teammates. He would surely have got his revenge on Payton for his act.

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Written by:

Vishwesha Kumar

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Vishwesha Kumar is an NBA writer at EssentiallySports. Holder of a Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, Vishwesha has been writing content for about 3 years now. He has been following the NBA for nearly 10 years, since first starting off in the year 2012.
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