According to Leandro Barbosa’s very entertaining post in The Players’ Tribune, what started as an ordinary pregame visit with the trainer ended with Shaquille O’Neal running through the halls wearing, well, nothing.
Barbosa wrote in the post it started when the players had to wait for the trainer, who was running more than 15 minutes behind.
O’Neal, it seems, eventually got tired of waiting.
So he takes off his towel (not sure why) and heads down to our trainer’s office. He opens the door and is like, “Are you coming? Or am I going to have to pick you up and take you?”
At first, the trainer can’t tell if Shaq is joking or not. Shaq takes a few steps closer and our trainer knows he’s not. So the trainer takes off — sprinting down the hall.
Shaq follows him, of course. Still (expletive) naked. Now Shaq is in a dead sprint down the hallway, running past arena workers and other staff, screaming at the top of his lungs. This is a normal business day. It’s a weekday.
Everyone is in official Suns gear or in suits. Shaq is in his birthday suit.
The chase, according to Barbosa, lasted for 15 minutes. Of course since then, O’Neal has moved on, and is now on TV where common decency standards require that he keep his clothes on at all time.