Shaquille O’Neal has finally come clean about his now-infamous mid-show dash off the set of “Inside the NBA” last month.
During the April 22 broadcast, the NBA legend abruptly stood up and exited the studio mid-segment, leaving his co-hosts and viewers wondering what was so urgent.
While fans speculated and memes flew, Shaq kept it vague — until Thursday night, when he told “The Tonight Show’s” Jimmy Fallon the unfiltered truth, he really had to go No. 2.
At first, Shaq tried to play it off, blaming his sudden exit on something a little less urgent.
“I was drinking a lot of water that day,” he told Fallon. But moments later, he came clean: “I lied to you on national TV. It wasn’t a number one run … it was a number two run. I had to go bad. I had to go so bad.”
On the night in question, on the set of “Inside the NBA,” as Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley chatted about Kawhi Leonard’s big night, Shaq sat silently—until he suddenly stood up, circled the desk, and made a beeline past the cameras, yelling, “Keep talking, Chuck,” as he jogged out of the room.
Reportedly, the next night, the set had a new prop. A portable toilet.
Shaq blamed the emergency bathroom break on too much olive oil.
“I’m drinking olive oil because I want to be sexy,” O’Neal told Fallon. “That’s what it said on Instagram, it said if you drink olive oil for 14 days, it’ll clear stuff out and you’ll get yourself a flat stomach. So, I was trying it.”
