Shaquille O'Neal
American basketball player (born 1972)
Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal ( shə-KEEL; born March 6, 1972), commonly known as Shaq ( SHAK), is an American former professional basketball player who is a sports analyst on the television program Inside the NBA. Nicknamed "Diesel", among others, he is a 7-foot-1-inch (2.16 m) and 325-pound (147 kg) center who played for six teams over his 19-year career in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is a four-time NBA champion, three-time NBA Finals MVP, and the 2000 NBA MVP. O'Neal is widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players and one of the most dominant centers in NBA history.
After playing college basketball for the LSU Tigers, O'Neal was selected by the Orlando Magic with the first overall pick in the 1992 NBA draft. He quickly became one of the best centers in the league, winning NBA Rookie of the Year in 1992–93 and leading his team to the 1995 NBA Finals. After four years with the Magic, O'Neal signed as a free agent with the Los Angeles Lakers. They won three consecutive championships in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Amid a feud between O'Neal and his teammate Kobe Bryant, O'Neal was traded to the Miami Heat in 2004, and his fourth NBA championship followed in 2006. Midway through the 2007–2008 season he was traded to the Phoenix Suns. After a season-and-a-half with the Suns, O'Neal was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2009–10 season. O'Neal played for the Boston Celtics in the 2010–11 season before retiring.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Shaquille O'Neal” is american basketball player (born 1972). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Shaquille, O'Neal and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american basketball player (born 1972)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q169452. VIAF identifies the subject as 66658782. The Library of Congress control number is n93034386. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1972, 2000, 1992 and 1995.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
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Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Shaquille O'Neal primary sources, Shaquille O'Neal archive and Shaquille research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Shaquille O'Neal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.