Basketball superstar, business mogul, nightclub and dance DJ. Yup, our man Shaq has done a ton of cool stuff in his life. Yet at 51 years old, he’s far from done! In a recent interview with PEOPLE Magazine, O’Neal talked about a few remaining things on his bucket list.
O’Neal has hosted TV shows and he’s been a TV personality on TNT’s Inside the NBA for years. He’s released best-selling music CD’s and done live shows at music festivals around the world. Of course there’s the jewelry – NBA Championships he won with the Los Angeles Lakers.
So… if you happen to be a multimillionaire businessman and sports superstar, what’s left? Good question – and exactly what PEOPLE talked to Shaq about. His answers were pretty darned interesting…
Number one on the bucket list? Skydiving! Yup, the big man wants to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Gotta admit, that would not have been one of our guesses, and certainly not anything we here in the ShaqFu Radio offices are looking to try.
Shaq told PEOPLE: “I’ve mostly done everything that I’ve set out to do, but I would like to skydive. The big man says he also had an interest in scuba diving, but that didn’t go so well. Tried it, but didn’t like it, “because it was “very, very, very, very deep.”
Again, talking to PEOPLE, Shaq said, “I didn’t like scuba diving. Skydiving would probably be next on the list. A lot of times, I just sit and think like, ‘I want to do this, I want to do that.’ So I think the next big thing that I would love to do is skydive.”
O’Neal says he once inquired about skydiving but wasn’t sure the parachutes could support his large frame. Honestly, if we were built the same as O’Neal, we’d have the exact same concerns! Shaq: “My only fear is, can the parachute hold me? I went to one little class one time and the lady was like, ‘How much do you weigh?’ I was like, and at this time I was heavy, I was like, ‘400 lbs.’ She was like, ‘I think it goes up to 350.”
On the other hand, Shaq may have a plan in mind to take care of his x-large body, telling PEOPLE that his mother is good at sewing. Maybe she could sew two parachutes together, he suggested.
Still, is that really a good idea? Shaq worried… “It’ll be just my luck that mom didn’t feel like sewing that day. And then I’ll be all the way up there and then the thing just rips in half. So I want to make sure that everything’s in order before I go up there.”
Doing the skydiving thing isn’t the only super-interesting thing on O’Neal’s bucket list. He also told the magazine he’s interested in hiking and climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. “I’ve thought about it, hiking up to that,” says O’Neal. “But I’ll probably have to get into tip, tip, tip, tip, tip-top shape to do that.”
Not surprisingly, Shaq says even though he’s 51, he still considers himself a kid at heart. In keeping with all that daydreaming fun, Shaq has recently taken on yet another new gig… that of Chief Fantasy Officer for a shop called Fantasy Lab in Las Vegas. Shaq: “It is a place that just helps you, I don’t want to say fulfill your fantasy, but it just helps you elaborate more about your fantasy.”
Will the big man make the big (parachute) jump? Well, we hope he finds a parachute big enough first! Stay tuned for details…