Shaq and Other Ex-NBA Players Remember the Night Biggie Died
Shaquille O’Neal was with The Notorious B.I.G. just hours before he died back on March 9, 1997. According to Shaq’s 2011 book, Shaq Uncut: My Story, the NBA great was with Biggie at a tattoo parlor that day. And he even planned on attending a party sponsored by Vibe magazine with Biggie that night before he fell asleep while he was waiting for his ride and ultimately missed the party. Shaq found out Biggie died when his mother paged him early the next morning to check on him.
According to ESPN’s Amin Elhassan—who worked for the Suns during Shaq’s time in Phoenix—Shaq once told his Suns teammates that he tried to convince Biggie not to go to the party on the night of his death:
Today marks 20 years since Biggie’s death, and to commemorate the occasion, The Undefeated caught up with Shaq recently to talk about that fateful night. Shaq talked about his close relationship with Biggie, remembered a funny moment the two shared when Shaq took Biggie out on his jet-ski once, and spoke about what might have happened if he had attended the Vibe party with B.I.G.
“I don’t say I could’ve prevented it,” Shaq said. “I was just saying…if I was out there by the car, would they still have fired? That’s the only thing I would say to myself. I don’t wanna make it seem like I could’ve saved him. I don’t want to make it seem like if I was there, the shooters wouldn’t have shot. If I was there by the truck, after we all left and I’m dapping him up, would they still have shot?”
Other former NBA players spoke to The Undefeated about Biggie’s death as well. Nick Van Exel, who played for the Lakers in 1997, said that he found out the rapper died when some of his teammates came to his house in the middle of the night to let him know.
“We had a game that night,” he said. “I decided to stay in. It’s crazy because I was a big Biggie fan and my boy, my college teammate—who was my teammate with the Lakers—Corie Blount, was a Tupac fan. That night it happened, they came to my house, it had to be like 3 something in the morning. They were like, ‘Man, they got ya boy. They got ya boy.’ I’m like, ‘Who?’ They were like, ‘Man, they shot Biggie.'”
Baron Davis, a Los Angeles native who was still in high school when Biggie died, said he was “heartbroken” when he found out the rapper died in his city. He told The Undefeated he saw quite a few NBA players in the days that followed who were broken up about it.
“It was a volatile time in L.A. anyway,” he said. “I remember seeing a lot of the pro dudes…the next day or two and them crying about it. They was like, ‘We was right there, man.’ For me, just being in school and around, you hear rumblings in there streets. The streets talk.”
Shaq, Van Exel, Davis, and others also spoke more about what Biggie’s death meant to them and those around them. You can check out the entire Undefeated story here. You can also read about how hip-hop might be different today if Biggie were still alive here.
