NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal is known for displaying his boisterous personality when he mingles with people in public.
That was evident again when “Shaq” recently made a cameo in a workout video with a popular Instagram creator at a gym, although O’Neal faced some online criticism for his perceived approach.
The woman appeared to be in the middle of a rep on a machine when O’Neal surprised her from behind.
The 7-foot-1 O’Neal jokingly introduced himself to the woman as LeBron James, according to a voiceover the creator included with her now-viral video.
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While the woman appeared to enjoy the surprise encounter with O’Neal, some social media commenters thought it was awkward and the former NBA star would not be looked at kindly if he was not a celebrity.
“Don’t try this if you ain’t got shaq money cuz she not gonna laugh,” Instagram user dregothits wrote.
“Rich and famous privilege is truly a thing cause if this was any other (guy), they’d be talking bout how he’s a ‘creep’ or ‘weirdo,'” X user @chiefflips added about the viral clip.
The video of the interaction between O’Neal and the woman can be seen below; be warned that it does include NSFW language.
Fortunately for O’Neal, many others took a light-hearted view and just enjoyed the video, which had over 53,000 likes on Instagram at the time of writing.
“(Laughing emojis) he so cool and funny,” Instagram user @nicole.ingram wrote about O’Neal appearing in the video.
“He is always somewhere (laughing emojis),” Instagram user @topmodel518 added.
It is not rare to see O’Neal out and about interacting with fans in Atlanta, where he spends a lot of time due to his job as a analyst on “Inside The NBA” on ESPN. The live broadcast of the show is filmed during the season at TNT Sports Studio J in downtown Atlanta.
The NBA Hall of Famer has been a mainstay on the popular TV program, which was regularly seen on TNT until the last NBA season when it moved to ESPN, since 2011.
It is likely only a matter of time before we see O’Neal pop up elsewhere.
