Shaquille O’Neal may not have played a pro basketball game in a while, but the 7-foot-tall ex-Laker certainly still looms large in the public consciousness of Los Angeles, amongst locals and, perhaps in particular, to tourists visiting our fair city. And now, thanks to his appearance on CNN’s In 24 Hours travel show, we know just what Shaq suggests tourists do when they come to town.
Sporting eyeglasses and a particularly loud blazer, the former athlete and Kazaam film star tells viewers that, “L.A. is about fun, having a good time and winning.”
When not praising the accuracy of TMZ-style star tour busses (“Exactly what you see on TV,” he says), he goes on to say that L.A. has become a sports city on par with any other major league hub in the country. There is the arrival of the Rams, success of the Dodgers, the Clippers and, of course, his own former NBA team, the Lakers.
To fans of basketball, the Lakers have, “delivered hall-of-famers you’ll never forget. Magic Johnson. Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Kobe Bryant. Shaq. Jerry West,” he notes, including himself ever so modestly.
No real revelations of where Shaq likes to hang out in his spare time, including on his time off from appearing on his current Emmy-winning television show Inside the NBA (unless it’s riding around on the star tours and occasionally hopping up to lead the tour like he mentions he likes to do, because that’s what we are hoping is true) but we do learn that, in Shaq’s world at least, everyone in Los Angeles is happy and beautiful. Thanks, Shaq.
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