It was a whole row last year when Shaunie Henderson said she didn’t love her former husband. It was another storm when Shaquille O’Neal took accountability for her feelings. It’s no secret that O’Neal has a lot of regret about his past marriage. In many ways, the divorce changed Shaq. He’s got a hard stance on certain subjects now, all self-imposed. It’s a stark difference from the prime years of his NBA career, which involved a hard partying lifestyle.

Shaq got more candid on some touchy subjects than he ever has before when he sat across Dax Shepard on Armchair Expert. He even revealed coming to terms with one of his sons smoking w–d. O’Neal was never much of a smoker. Only recently, he has been open about smoking h–kah.

He owns his own h–kah bar in Atlanta but claimed to David Letterman on his Netflix show that he’s not addicted. He somewhat maintained that stance to Shepard as well, when he explained why he smokes hookah. “It enables me to follow the routine of ‘sit your a– down.'” Which, as Shepard translated, meant calming down.

O’Neal admitted he needed to do a lot of calming back in the day. “When I was young and dumb and I lost my family… by doing too much, being out, being in too many places.” That lifestyle Shaq talks about was very public. He was notorious for partying. He claimed partying after beating Michael Jordan caused him to be swept in the 1995 finals. His time in Miami was a lot wilder.

After his stint with the Heat, problems in O’Neal’s marriage to Shaunie also started becoming public knowledge. A couple of attempted reconciliations later, they finalized their divorce in 2011, the same year Shaq retired from the NBA. From then on, O’Neal’s been more business than parties. That was all a part of his growth. “So now, don’t go to clubs. Don’t go to gentlemen’s clubs. If you see me in the club, it’s because I’m DJing. Yeah. I gave myself a lifetime ban on that stuff,” O’Neal revealed.

It is true. His annual Super Bowl party is now Shaq’s Fun House, where he DJs. He headlines Lollapalooza or Tomorrowland and performs at raves in Croatia. But the old party animal Big Diesel is no more. This transformation is not bad. However, it came with a side effect.

Shaquille O’Neal’s personal pivot

All work and no play makes Shaq a dull boy. When he left his partying lifestyle – that included drinking too – back with his marriage, he freed up a lot of time. On David Letterman’s show, Charles Barkley revealed that O’Neal felt left out when the whole TNT crew went to the nearby watering hole after the games.

Although Shaq doesn’t abstain completely from drinking, he only drinks in private by himself. So his response to fix his after-hours boredom was to buy a whole hookah bar for himself. Or as Chuck put it, “He has too much money.”

With over $500 million in the bank, O’Neal enabled what he refuses to call an addiction (he told Letterman he could quit anytime). “At a hookah bar, you sit down ‘cuz at a club, bottles, and you walk in and section and this and that, but at a hookah bar, you sit down. So now, when I’m thinking about the next move, it’s blowing out,” Shaq told Shepard.

Although his new side hustle and routine have become an escape, regret still clings to him, “Because of the consequences.” That showed when Shaquille O’Neal admitted to the world, “I wouldn’t have been in love with me either.” But at least the big guy’s grown from that.