20 years ago (5 years before Shareef O’Neal was born), I was having fun watching the ShawShaq Redemption in Orlando. If you don’t get the title, it’s a reference to the great film The Shawshank Redemption, and an alley-oop from Brian Shaw to Shaq. The oops from Penny & 3D during those Magic days were also pretty great. Then Shaq went to LA and the oops were mainly thrown by Nick Van Exel and then later Kobe Bryant – who probably has the most memorable oop to Shaq ever: WCF vs the Blazers in 2000 (the year Shareef O’Neal was born).
Now here I am 15 years later, feeling really old, because I’m still talking about O’Neal alley-oop dunks but now it’s Shareef catching them and younger brother, Shaqir, throwing them. And it’s just a matter of time until little Shaqir is catching oops of his own and doing this on higher rims.
https://instagram.com/p/6_Al87DT2K
Back to the ShawShaq Redemption example above. I didn’t just choose that video because it featured Brian Shaw and Shaq. This dunk was a special family related one because O’Neal’s grandmother, Odessa Chambliss, passed away earlier that week and this was his first game back since her death. After Shaq caught the oop, he pointed up to the sky to honor her – the great grandmother of Shareef and Shaqir.