{"id":555024,"date":"2026-03-21T13:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T13:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/555024\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T13:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T13:35:07","slug":"shaquille-oneal-threw-away-his-1996-olympic-gold-medal-after-playing-15-seconds-in-the-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/555024\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaquille O’Neal Threw Away His 1996 Olympic Gold Medal After Playing 15 Seconds In The Final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shaquille O\u2019Neal<\/a> is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. The No. 1 overall pick in the 1992 NBA Draft changed the NBA forever, whether it was through his multiple Championships and Finals MVPs or through the multiple rule changes<\/a> that were instituted to slow him down. We have never seen an athlete like O\u2019Neal before, and we might never see one again.<\/p>\n

As all elite athletes do, Shaq has represented his country at the Summer Olympics. Despite missing out on selection to the 1992 Dream Team<\/a>, O\u2019Neal signed up to have his taste of Olympic glory at the 1996 Olympics, which were hosted in Atlanta, Georgia. Unfortunately, Shaq\u2019s gold medal-winning moment turned sour due to a decision not in his control.<\/p>\n

In a recent appearance on the \u2018Podpah\u2019 podcast<\/a>, O\u2019Neal revealed that he never kept his 1996 Olympic Gold medal, tossing it out of the window on his drive home after winning it because he played only 15 seconds in the Gold medal game against Serbia and Montenegro.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played in the \u201996 Olympics in Atlanta. Played great, saved the team many times. But in the Championship game, coach played David Robinson. He played me just 15 seconds. So, when I got the medal, on my drive home, I just threw it out the window because I didn\u2019t want it. I felt like I didn\u2019t deserve it, so I just took it and threw it out the window.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaq averaged 9.4 points and 4.6 rebounds in 16 minutes per game over five appearances at the 1996 Olympics. He did play consistently big minutes for the team until the Gold medal game, where he played just five minutes, and not the 15 seconds he claims.<\/p>\n

David Robinson<\/a> played fewer minutes than Shaq in every game of the tournament except the final two medal games against Australia and Serbia. He averaged 9.8 points and 3.2 rebounds on 11.4 minutes per game, with his numbers being heavily carried by the 28-point performance he had against Serbia and Montenegro in the Gold medal game.<\/p>\n

This was Robinson\u2019s third and final Olympic appearance, so it could be that coach Lenny Wilkens wanted Robinson to have a big moment, given that Shaq was just 24 years old at the time. O\u2019Neal has found multiple reasons to motivate himself against Robinson<\/a>, so this likely fell into that category. However, an unfortunate side-effect of this is that O\u2019Neal would never represent Team USA at the Olympics again. His only Olympic memory is quite a bittersweet one.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neal was at the peak of his powers for the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games, but would choose not to represent Team USA for those Games. These four years saw arguably the greatest individual peak in NBA history as O\u2019Neal was dominating en route to a Lakers three-peat, where he won all three Finals MVP awards as well.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that Shaquille O\u2019Neal was simply exhausted after making runs deep into the summer for each of those years while taking heavy punishment from opponents due to the \u2018Hack-a-Shaq\u2019 tactics employed against him<\/a>. It\u2019s quite certain that a presence like O\u2019Neal would\u2019ve avoided Team USA\u2019s 2004 Olympic embarrassment, as they came back home from Greece with a Bronze medal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shaquille O\u2019Neal is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. The No. 1 overall pick in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-555024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}