The Huge Mistake Shaquille O'Neal Made With His First Paycheck As A Professional Athlete
Shaquille O'Neal, otherwise known as Shaq, is arguably one of the most famous athletes of all time. The 7'1" former professional basketball player became widely known during his time playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, where he and Kobe Bryant successfully led the team to earn three championship rings. That being said, it goes without saying that Shaq certainly has extraordinary skills with a basketball. But as far as financial skills go, those took him a little while longer to learn.
It's no question that the highest-paid NBA players earn a massive salary, seeing as even the lowest paid ones are making upwards of $1 million annually. Unfortunately, at the same time, there are far too many cases of retired athletes filing for bankruptcy, or horror stories about how they ended up spending all the money they made in their career. Now while Shaq is pretty far from filing for bankruptcy today with his whopping $500 million net worth, he'll be the first person to tell you there was definitely a time when he came close to doing so. That being said, let's take a look at the huge mistake that Shaquille O'Neal made with his first paycheck as a professional athlete.
How Shaq spent his first NBA paycheck
Shaquille O'Neal was the first overall pick in the 1992 NBA Draft, where he was officially recruited to play ball for the Orlando Magic. This is obviously a tremendous achievement and every aspiring basketball player's dream, so surely Shaq wasn't too keen on blowing his opportunity in the league by doing something stupid off the court. However, while it is true that Shaq didn't do anything to jeopardize his opportunity to play professionally in his free time, unfortunately he did make some pretty big mistakes with the first big check he received.
Shaq's first paycheck as a professional athlete came in at $1 million, which was most likely the largest amount of money he had ever received in his life up until that point. This being the case, it's understandable that upon receiving that check one would undoubtedly treat themselves and their loved ones, and maybe even buy themselves a nice sports car while they're at it. Yet at the same time, you never know what the future holds. For that reason it would also be smart to also invest some of that money for a rainy day, or pay off any debt that may do sneaky damage to your net worth. Shaq, however, took a different route, and admittedly it was one that would end up seriously costing him (no pun intended.)
How Shaq blew $1 million in one hour
Shaq has certainly broken some records (and backboards) in his time as a professional athlete. However, there is a little known record he might've broken under the radar as well: blowing $1 million in one hour. That's right, just 60 minutes after receiving his first million-dollar check, Shaq blew every single dollar of it. Now as you're sitting there reading this, you're probably imagining how difficult it would be to spend an entire million in just one hour. But on the contrary, it's actually pretty easy to do, and Shaq is living proof of this. Immediately after that million dollar check hit his bank account, Shaq gave $100,000 to his mother, paid off her mortgage, and dropped another $300,000 on two luxury Mercedes Benz's for him and his father. Following this, he went on a wild shopping spree, buying jewelry, clothes, and more until inevitably all of his money was gone.
This obviously ended up being a tough learning experience for Shaq, who at the time had barely any type of financial literacy or education, and thus knew nothing about income taxes, investing, or anything of the like. Fortunately for him, Shaq had some good people around to help him learn from this mistake and educate himself financially so that he would never repeat it again. And seeing as he's worth $500 million as of today, it's safe to say he took their advice well and learned his lesson.