After watching Kenny “The Jet” Smith throw Shaquille O’Neal into Christmas trees and bicker over the 1995 Finals for 15 years, it’s easy to forget that there had been a bitter family ‘feud’ brewing for three decades. Inside the NBA has moved to ESPN. However, the tensions that began during their NBA careers and carried forward through the TNT era never ended. Once more, a simple question has made Shaq and Kenny’s beef center stage.

When The Jet stopped by BigBoyTV, he was asked a seemingly harmless question: Who among the Inside Guys would he allow to do school drop-offs for his kids? Kenny instead dove deep into a story of when one of his future colleagues took the school run duty upon himself.

Smith detailed a harrowing afternoon in Houston during the late ’90s when O’Neal allegedly “kidnapped” his then six-year-old son, KJ Smith, from preschool without permission. The incident, which nearly led to a police report, was apparently the catalyst for years of on-air barbs between the two.

The story involves a young, “crazy” Orlando-era Shaq whose eldest, Taahirah, shared a preschool with KJ. Although they don’t name the kids, it adds up with the fact that Taahirah grew up in Houston and has a disdain for the Rockets.

Smith arrived at the school only to find his child missing. “I’m like, ‘Hey, where’s KJ?’ ‘Oh, Shaquille picked him up.’ I’m like, ‘Shaqua?’ I’m not even thinking Shaquille is Shaq,” Smith recounted. “You gave my son to Shaq? What is going on? I don’t have his number.” Smith had to call his wife, who managed to track down someone in Shaq’s entourage.

News served to you like never before!

Prefer us on Google, To get latest news on feed

Prefer Us on Google

When the two finally connected, Smith found that Shaq hadn’t just taken his boy. “I was picking up my daughter… we’re at the mall. We’re going shopping,” Shaq told him after giving KJ a complete makeover. “He took my son, got a haircut, and got him clothes,” Smith said. “He had bags of sneakers and gear coming in. He’s like, ‘All right, Uncle Shaq.'”

Those who know Shaq wouldn’t find it out of the ordinary that the big guy gave sneakers and a haircut to a kid again. But back then, Shaq and Kenny were rivals after the Rockets swept the Magic in the ’95 Finals and didn’t know each other that well. Hence, Kenny felt some boundaries were crossed.

Uncle Shaq’s antics started a silent beef

After retirement, Smith became the first permanent panelist of Inside the NBA. And apparently, this kindergarten heist was the background for why he was notoriously hard on Lakers-era Shaquille O’Neal. It even came during one of the final episodes of Inside the NBA on TNT before the ESPN move.

You can’t really blame Kenny. To him, the unauthorized barbershop trip was overstepping. “I was like, ‘Yo, you can’t pick up my son, take him to get a haircut without me knowing… how you going to do that, then cut it a different way?’”

The Big Aristotle is known to give hundreds of kids sneakers and haircuts in his Shaq to School events. So he didn’t realize that made Smith so mad, a fact he confessed only in 2024. He thought he was being fun Uncle Shaqie-Wackie, and it backfired.

The culture shock continued as Kenny stepped out of one of Shaq’s many customized cars. Platinum-selling East Coast rapper, DJ Diesel, had introduced 6-year-old KJ to very explicit rap music. Smith had to painfully teach Shaq, a new father back then, why he couldn’t play such music to kids.

While Shaq viewed the day as a fun unc gesture, Smith admits it nearly led to a police report and fueled a prank war between the two for years. So when Kenny is able to throw a hulking Big Diesel in the race to the board, you know where the motivation comes from.