Shaquille O’Neal is a tall man. At 7’1 he is practically a giant. With that height, Shaq always was a guy who had a lot of body mass. His structure, and physique made him heavy, which he used to his advantage in the game. He found it easy to shrug people off and dominate oppositions. That is why he scored a lot of dunks all throughout his career.

With that huge frame and recorded weight of 325lbs, maintaining physical fitness was not always easy. Shaq missed a total of 200 games because of injuries over the course of his 19 year long career. In his opinion, those 200 games could have made him even more outstanding as a player. The injuries held him back just a little over the years.

“You know, my only regret is that I missed almost 200 games due to injury while I was averaging 25 points a game. That’s another 5,000 points that I left on the table. It would have put me No. 2 in scoring and further up in stats. I had a lot of freak injuries, had knee surgeries, toe injuries and my hand broken twice from hard fouls. You miss near 200 games, averaging 25 points, that’s 5,000 points right there to add. That hurts me.” Shaq once said.

WATCH THIS STORY: Shaq’s illustrious sports career.

Shaquille O’Neal slams ‘sensitive superstars’ 

Shaq played through many injuries in his career and had that fire to actually play through them. In his own words, he says that he was almost always sore in some body part or the other. In the recent episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, the conversation started about Ben Simmons. Shaq lashed out and expressed his frustration over the ‘sensitive superstars’. 

“You guys see how I walk, you know why? ‘Cause I always played hurt. I couldn’t even bend down and touch my toes, I always played hurt. I got bad knees, I got bad feet, but I always played hurt. But you know what, my guys respect me. The world respects me. Little kids respect me. ‘Cause they know always, how I’m playing hurt.”

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“A lot of times when I was hurting and didn’t win, you didn’t hear me say, ‘oh man my ankle and back’ hey, you just gotta suck it up. It’s always okay for me to say, I’m not good enough. I gotta get better. Everytime we getting swept, it ain’t nobody’s fault but mine. Period. I don’t even look at my other teammates. It’s my fault. Then I listen to those radio stations, Shaq this Shaq that and it all just builds up. — The problem with these sensitive superstars, they always got an excuse to live off.”

Shaq was very clear about what he said. Subsequently, it makes you wonder how much better he would have been if he had been fit for even half of the 200 games he missed because of injury. Absolutely crazy-scary to think about because Shaq already is a legend like no other in the NBA.