Shaquille O’Neal is set to be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Friday night. Shaq’s career and legacy have been shaped by dominance. He dominated the court, he dominated the competition guarding him, and he dominated the media.
But outside of basketball, O’Neal had his own personal struggles. None were more influential than growing up without his biological father around. Soon after O’Neal was born, his father Joseph Toney was arrested for forgery. After that moment, he was forever out of his son’s life.
Shaq found a father figure in Sgt. Phillip Harrison who married his mother. Harrison effectively became the eventual star’s father, helping shape him as a person and basketball player. But despite Harrison’s best efforts, there was always a void left by the lack of a biological father in O’Neal’s life.
Ahead of receiving the largest honor of his huge basketball career, Shaq finally met his father. After decades of living without him by his side, O’Neal found the strength to let bygones be bygones. There was no resentment from the former NBA center. Instead there was forgiveness.
The following from Mike Wise of The Undefeated:
Thirty thousand feet up in the air, O’Neal asked the pilot to turn the plane around. Toney, visiting a friend in a nearby nursing home, was told by Crawford to come to Vonda’s. He quickly obliged, taking a seat and nervously tapping at the table.
When O’Neal appeared, he was wearing an Incredible Hulk T-shirt. Of course, understatement has never been among his virtues.
Toney slowly rose from his seat, speechless.
And O’Neal opened those massive arms, hugging the man who had not held him since he was in the hospital birthing room on March 6, 1972.
“I’m on cloud nine,” Toney said, recounting the scene. He embraced O’Neal for several seconds until they finally both sat down.
The words tumbled out. “I didn’t know if you was mad at me,” Toney said, his lean 6-foot-1 frame looking up from his chair at O’Neal. He spoke of all those times when friends called, telling him his son was here. He told him why he never came: “I didn’t know if you hated me.”
“I don’t hate you,” O’Neal recalled telling him. “I don’t judge. I don’t have the right to judge. And, being a father, I know it’s hard.”
O’Neal told Toney he wasn’t angry, that Harrison became the male role model he needed, and that the only thing that upset him over the years was seeing his biological father show up on the Ricki Lake Show sometime after he was drafted. For 18 years he had never heard from Toney and now he was on TV.
“I had a good life,” O’Neal said to him. “I had my own room. I had grass to cut. I had neighbors’ grass to cut. Wasn’t fearin’ for my life. I had a couple fights here and there, but it’s not like walking around the corner and people shooting at you, and there was heroin and marijuana on the corner. I had a great life and I wasn’t complaining.”
In a career full of overpowering dominance, Shaq showed the most strength he ever has while meeting his biological father.
