Shareef O’Neal Talks About Recovering From Open-Heart Surgery: ‘I Was Scared’

Shareef O’Neal opened up about his road to recovery in the aftermath of his open-heart surgery in 2018. The 23-year-old son of NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal shared his experience, from being in college to heading back to the court, during an appearance on the Now For Later podcast.

Shareef underwent open-heart surgery to treat his anomalous coronary artery, a heart defect caused by an artery having grown in the wrong place. At the time, he was 18 and decided to share his journey on social media.

Reflecting on that time, Shareef says his parents’ support was essential in his recovery. He remembers his father telling him, “don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do something.”

“It sounds really simple, but at that time, it was like, ‘Oh yeah, whatever I believe I can do, I can do it.’ So, you know, I kind of stuck with that mindset too,” the 23-year-old said.

It is that same mindset that helped him transition into his professional career.

“I didn’t have the best college degree,” Shareef said. “It actually wasn’t good at all. But, you know, I wanted to go pro. I wanted to try it. I feel like, as an adult, you gotta go through trials and errors. Like it didn’t work, but keep trying something else.”

In 2022, he played in the NBA Summer League for the Los Angeles Lakers but wasn’t offered a contract to compete with the team for the season, reported PEOPLE. Ultimately, Shareef did sign a six-figure deal with the league’s developmental team, G-League Ignite.

Shareef said his parents were fully on board in supporting his decision after the surgery.

“I feel like both of my parents did a good job of letting me decide,” he said.

Shareef’s next steps after he was cleared to play basketball again.

“Whatever I said, they were going to be on board with it,” he added.

“They never said they were scared for me to play because I think they knew that would scare me,” Shareef continued. “That’s something you don’t want to hear from your parents.”

The 23-year-old says news of fellow players can sometimes be challenging to navigate.

“When the whole thing happened with Damar Hamlin, that just brought me back to 2018,” he said, referring to the Buffalo Bills player who had cardiac arrest earlier this year. “It’s crazy cause I can go so long without thinking about it, and then if one little thing reminds me of it, it just brings it all back. That’s something I’m still trying to work on.”

Most recently, Shareef took his friend Bronny James’ defense after he also went into cardiac arrest this Monday.

“Bronny started hanging with Shareef, and now look,” someone tweeted, according to TMZ. “Stay yo ass away from him he’s destined for greatness, not overseas.”

To that, Shareef replied in a since-deleted tweet.

“That is very disrespectful of you to say. I’ve been around Bronny for a very long time before this happened … I’ll pray for you. You need help … sick that you would even say something like that,” he said.