An old Gary Vitti clip has put Shaquille O'Neal's Lakers pranks back under a harsher light.
Vitti, the former longtime Lakers head athletic trainer, discussed O'Neal on Byron Scott's Fast Break and started with affection. "I love Shaq, I absolutely adore him," he said.
Then he added the part that stuck. People around Shaq had to be looking over their shoulder "all the time."
The bathroom story behind that line is the reason the clip has aged so badly. Vitti said he went to a urinal and made the mistake of not checking whether Shaq was in a stall. He heard his name, turned around and saw O'Neal standing in the stall with used toilet paper. Vitti said Shaq threw it toward him. Basketball Network's recap says the throw missed.
The same interview also featured another Vitti story involving Chick Hearn's soiled underwear. It sits alongside other extreme Shaq prank stories that have been told by Gary Payton, Jason Richardson, Matt Barnes and Ty Lue.
The shift is in the framing. What once might have been treated as wild locker-room humor now sounds much uglier. O'Neal remains one of the NBA's most familiar personalities, but stories like this complicate the easy version of that image. Vitti's affection is real. So is the discomfort in the details.
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