Lucille O'Neal, the mother of basketball legend and sports analyst Shaquille O'Neal, shared her perspective of the breakdown of her son's former marriage while on the radio show Sway In the Morning.
While visiting the program with Sonya Curry, the mother of Golden State Warriors point guard, Stephen Curry, around the 30-minute mark, Calloway asked O'Neal how it was when Shaq met his first wife, Shaunie Henderson née Nelson.
O'Neal made her response brief but thorough, saying that before her son's marriage, she'd reached a point where she felt her place in Shaq's life was "secure."
"I don't care who he marry or who he get with, I know my place and I'm secure in it," she said. "But it's hard to see them go into a relationship and somehow you may feel maybe that might not be the right relationship. But we have to step back and we have to let it happen."
As for Curry, she's never had a doubt about any of her children-in-law, saying that she prayed for her children's significant others since they were babies. "I'd literally every night pray that God will bring godly woman and a man into their lives and he has not failed me yet," she said. "And I have two beautiful daughter-in-laws and a son-in-law, that I actually consider them daughters now and a son."
Curry added that she has "great relationships" with her children's spouses, and even joked that there's "a no-return policy." But O'Neal's comment might not sit well with Nelson, who shares four children with Shaq, and was married to the former NBA player from 2002 to 2009.
Last month, Henderson, who's currently married to Pastor Keion Henderson, Undefeated: Changing the Rules and Winning On My Own Terms, shared in an excerpt from the book that she'd perhaps gotten accustomed to the NBA lifestyle while sharing her ex-husband with the public.
"He was trying to be a world-famous, thirty-something multimillionaire with thousands of women throwing themselves at him, and people in general begging just to be in his presence, while being a husband and a father simultaneously," Henderson wrote. "How could anyone possibly know how to do that?"
