Shaquille O’Neal: Ex-NBA Star’s Net Worth & Salaries

How rich is Shaquille O’Neal?

Shaquille O’Neal was one of the best and most famous basketball players in the world in the 1990s and 2000s. With its height of 2.16 meters and its weight of almost 150 kilograms, it was hardly to be overlooked on the pitch. With the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat, Shaq won four NBA championships and is now a businessman and TV commentator. Shaquille O’Neal’s estimated net worth is € 330 million.

How Shaquille O’Neal’s fortune is made up

When Shaquille O’Neal signed his first NBA contract with the Orlando Magic as the number 1 draft pick in 1992, he initially received an annual salary of $ 3 million. This increased to $ 5.7 million by the 1995/1996 season. After moving to the Los Angeles Lakers in the summer of 1996, he collected a total of 166,592,487 million US dollars in 9 seasons. As of 2005, the salary was always $ 20 million. In addition, there is income as a rapper and actor as well as numerous sponsorship contracts. During and after his career, O’Neal advertised Burger King, Buick, Taco Bell, Pepsi, Oreos and JC Penny, among others. He also earns money as an investor. Shaq is one of the richest basketball players of all time and ranks behind greats like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson or LeBron James.

The path to the NBA

Shaquille O’Neal started playing basketball as a teenager and quickly grew to be a great player. So he led the team from his high school in San Antonio, Texas to the state championship in 1988. With 791 rebounds, he also set a record this season that is unmatched in all youth leagues in the USA to this day. He also showed his enormous talent at Louisiana State University, where he studied from 1989. However, he did not win a championship with the team. Instead, he decided in 1992 to quit his business studies early and to register for the NBA draft. There O’Neal was selected in the first place by the Orlando Magic.

Best newcomer, best scorer

Shaquille O’Neal made an impression in the NBA from the start. He became the first player ever to be voted “Player of the Week” in his first week. In his debut season 1992/1993 he was appointed to the All-Star-Team and in the end was named the best new player in the league. In the following season he formed a congenial duo with playmaker Penny Hardaway, which led the Magic into the play-offs for the first time in the history of the club. In the 1994/1995 season, O’Neal and Orlando even moved into the NBA Finals, but lost there against the Houston Rockets. After all, O’Neal was the best scorer in the league for the first time.

Gold medal and four NBA championships

In the summer of 1996 Shaquille O’Neal took part in the Olympic Games with the American national team and won the gold medal. During the tournament it was announced that O’Neal would play for the Los Angeles Lakers from the fall of 1996. With them he won his first NBA championship in the 1999/2000 season. He was also the top scorer of the league and was named the best player in the league in both the regular season and the finals. The Lakers defended their titles in the 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 seasons, and O’Neal won awards as MVP of the Finals series. From fall 2004 O’Neal played for the Miami Heat and won his fourth championship with them in 2006. After four years in Miami, he joined the Phoenix Suns in 2008, the Cleveland Cavaliers a year later, and retired as a basketball player in 2011 after spending his last active season with the Boston Celtics.

Shaquille O’Neal’s NBA salaries

Shaq earned in his total career in the NBA salaries of $ 286,344,668. These salaries make up the majority of the fortune, but lucrative advertising deals, as mentioned above, also brought in huge amounts of money.

Jack of all trades next to the square

Shaquille O’Neal was already active as a rapper during his career. Between 1993 and 1998 he released four studio albums and one of them (“Shaq Diesel” from 1993) even landed at number 25 on the US charts. O’Neal has also appeared occasionally as an actor since 1994. He was seen in 1996 in the film “Kazaam – The Spirit from the Bottle”, in 2006 in “Scary Movie 4” and in 2020 in “Hubie Halloween”. O’Neal has also been a basketball expert since 2011.

_{Image sources:
Cover picture: s_bukley / Bigstock.com
Keith Allison from Baltimore, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons}