Gary Payton and Shaquille O’Neal have plenty of history as teammates—from their time Los Angeles to their days in Miami—and The Glove is finally touching on some of their more… interesting memories together.
Payton’s recent interview with VladTV has been making the rounds thanks to a particular clip in which he said that Shaq was the ultimate “jokester” when they played together, and gave one example of the pranks he used to pull.
“We used to always play jokes,” Payton says in the above clip. “Shaq is a jokester. So if one of the rookies would be in the stall, he would take a bucket and use the bathroom in it for about a week. And then all of a sudden, he would pour it on them.”
Payton didn’t specify what was in the bucket, but you can use your imagination. He also told a story about another prank that he, himself, played on Shaq. As Payton explained, he once stole Shaq’s underwear at night—a now-framed pair that he still owns—and messed with his pants, forcing him to be “free-balling” with a towel on in his truck.
“He’d get in his truck and ride around and then he would throw the towel out and then he’d be free-balling,” Payton said. “So I used to keep all the shorts pair of drawers and all that stuff.”
Also in the discussion, the Glove touched on what it was like to win his first NBA championship at 36-years-old with Shaq in Miami, saying that he “felt the same way” winning in 2006 as he would have if he won in his prime.
“I made big shots in that series, saved us in game 3, and things like that, but it was a win,” Payton says in the clip above. “And this team was a little bit different than all of my previous teams I went to the finals with. Because we were like as really, really one. We all hung out together, we all did everything together.”
As Payton reflects, the players’ wives would even spend time with each other, to the point where the Pat Reilly-led team felt like a “big ole’ family.” The next year, Payton retired.
“When basketball doesn’t be fun to you anymore, then you know it’s time to quit,” he said. “I was on Oakland streets playing basketball for fun, for free. And they started giving me money. And when I was playing during that 17 years, it was fun. When I went in there and started seeing it was almost like a 9-5 job, a struggle that I hated to come to, I knew it was time to put basketball to the side. It was over. I didn’t have fun with it anymore.”
