Shaquille O'Neal’s appearance in Tiger King caused a stir last month, particularly because—during his cameo—he says that he bought two tigers from Joe Exotic.
Now, Shaq has once again cleared up what he said in the Netflix series. In the newest installation of The Steam Room podcast, Shaq said, “I want people to understand. When I say I own tigers—I always go to these zoos and I make donations and then they’ll say, ‘Ok these are your tigers.’ But the tigers never come into my possession.”
When he was asked how much time he’s spent with Exotic, Shaq launched into an explanation of how he discovered the private zoo in the first place. “Remember when [Oklahoma City] was playing San Antonio? You guys were flying but I was driving,” he said to Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Kenny Smith.
Shaq continued, “So on the way there, on the highway, I saw a sign that said ‘Tigers’ so I went. That was the first time I went. I went, said ‘hi,’ gave him some money, [he] gave me a couple white tigers.”
The podcast video then cut to Inside the NBA, where Shaq talked about visiting the private zoo and said, “Yesterday on my day off, I went to the G.W. Zoo. Shout out to Exotic Joe. It was a cat refugee place—beautiful tigers, lot of cats. I got two more tigers out there.”
The video then cut back to the four analysts. Shaq continued his explanation: “And then I think we went to Oklahoma City one more time, so only saw Joe once. The second time I went, he said, ‘Hey man, we don’t think you should come back. A lot of stuff is going on.’ And I never went back.”
Shaq gave a similar explanation during an episode of his podcast, The Big Podcast with Shaq, where he said he had no substantial connection to Exotic. He also discussed how uninformed he was about the animals' mistreatment at Exotic's facility.
