Danny Green says Shaquille O’Neal apologizes ‘to this day’ for how he treated him as rookie on Cavs

Former NBA big man Shaquille O’Neal isn’t one of the more popular players in league history just because of all he achieved on the court. He’s also an eccentric person with a larger-than-life personality.

However, sometimes his modus operandi led to him treating his teammates in questionable ways. In an example of how out of pocket O’Neal was in the locker room at times, he apparently defecated in teammate Devean George’s shoes after George didn’t deliver on a favor the big man asked for when they played together on the Los Angeles Lakers.

In a less extreme example, former NBA guard Danny Green said during a recent podcast appearance that when he was a rookie on the Cleveland Cavaliers and O’Neal’s teammate, the 15-time All-Star made him drive nearly one-and-a-half hours round trip to pick up some Krispy Kreme donuts.

During the same podcast appearance, Green shared some other details about his time with O’Neal.

“I was the only rookie, too,” Green said of the 2009-10 Cavs. “… We had another rookie they drafted, but they sent him back overseas — Christian Eyenga. … Shaq was — he apologizes to this day for how he was. I accept it, but yeah, he was — it was a lot of s—. He had me pledging and s— like that.”

O’Neal spent the penultimate season of his pro career with the Cavaliers in the 2009-10 campaign and likely hoped he would be the missing piece to Cleveland’s championship puzzle. For a while, it seemed as if he just might be, as the Cavaliers won a league-best 61 games in the regular season and secured the top seed in the Eastern Conference.

But the Cavaliers didn’t even reach the Eastern Conference Finals after they dominated the competition during the regular season. They were eliminated by the No. 4 seed Boston Celtics in the second round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs.

O’Neal jumped ship to the very same team that booted the Cavaliers from the 2010 NBA Playoffs not long after, as he agreed to sign with the Celtics in the 2010 offseason and finished out his legendary pro career in Boston.

O’Neal might’ve made Green’s life tougher when the sharpshooter was a rookie, but at least O’Neal is apologetic about how he treated him all these years later. Maybe some tough love from O’Neal helped Green build the mental fortitude necessary to carve out a lengthy career in the big leagues.