Shaq flips club crowd the bird
“PUT your middle finger up in the air!” NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal (as DJ Diesel) urged a crowd of 4,000 when he manned the turntables at Joey Morrissey’s HQ2 club at Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Some in the crowd wondered if the move was part of a feud between Shaq and a group of party trolls waving Charles Barkley shirts with No. 34 — the same number O’Neal retired as a Laker. “Shaq took to the mike and said, ‘But he ain’t got no ring!’ ” party sources told us. (Shaq played Kanye West’s bird-flipping anthem “To the World” which says, “Let me see you put your middle fingers up.”) But he also had some supporters: “Two bodacious blondes were flashing him . . . One had ‘Shaq’ written across her breasts, the other turned around and peeled down her bikini bottom to reveal ‘O’Neal’ scrawled across her posterior.” As things heated up on the dance floor, “suddenly smoke poured out of the DJ booth, with a floor that had been lowered a foot and a half to accommodate the 7-foot-1, 300-plus-pound sports icon,” a spy said. But “inspectors at the hot spot quickly realized the smoke was coming from a custom grill installed for Shaq by the restaurant Robert’s . . . Chef Will Savarese was grilling up six 2-pound tomahawk steaks for the DJ, who picked up the huge bone and gnawed at it like it was a tiny lamb chop.” Shaq signed basketballs and threw them into the crowd, then went back to his suite, where he ordered six more 24-ounce porterhouse steaks for his squad before he jumped on a private jet and flew to the MLB All-Star Game.
TALK about big shoes to fill …
NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal, all 7-foot-1 of him, tries to conquer his fear of sharks in “Shaq Does Shark Week,” airing Sunday (9 p.m.) as part of Discovery’s annual “Shark Week” programming slate, celebrating its 30th year on the air.
“I’m terrified of sharks,” O’Neal told The Post. “I’ve watched ‘ When Animals Attack’ 1 through 10. Remember ‘Jaws’? And I live in Florida, so all the shark attacks in Florida ...”
“Shaq Does Shark Week” is a little different from past “Shark Week” episodes: it’s a “buddy comedy” of sorts in which O’Neal, 46, is talked into diving with sharks by his pal Kevin Hart (via Skype) — and is then teamed with veteran actor/comedian (and former Marine) Rob Riggle, who “trains” Shaq at Atlantis, Paradise Island in The Bahamas before O’Neal takes the plunge with sharks in the ocean. “I didn’t want to do it,” O’Neal says. “I stayed by the stairs [in the Atlantis pool] and I noticed when I stayed by the stairs the sharks were looking at me … one shark came really close but he saw me and quickly went away. My fear was that I looked like a seal.”
“It’s handled comically,” says Will Packer, one of the episode’s executive-producers (it’s produced by Will Packer Media and Anomaly Entertainment). Packer should know: he’s produced big-screen comedies including “Think Like a Man,” “The Wedding Ringer” and “Ride Along.” “Shaq calls Kevin Hart to help him out and Kevin says, ‘There’s no way I’m getting in the water with sharks. You’re crazy. Someone who’s right for this and is totally qualified is Rob Riggle’ — who shows up and is less qualified than Shaq. Together they’re two clueless guys having fun and learning real facts about sharks. “We put them in several situations: one is a contained pool at Atlantis and there’s another situation with a seal and then Shaq is out in the ocean with Rob and sharks,” Packer says. “Rob basi- cally gives him nonsense advice that doesn’t help anyone. It’s hilarious. Thank god nobody got hurt. He wasn’t very helpful when it came to the science of sharks — but we had actual scientists on board for that.”
O’Neal then took his ocean dive in his specially constructed “Shaq Cage” — “there are not a lot of 7-foot shark divers and he couldn’t fit into a normal cage comfortably, so we had to create a cage,” Packer says — and spent about an hour underwater. “He was apprehensive at first, but once he saw the other divers and camera guys out in the water he said, ‘If those guys can do it, I’ll do it,’ and he went for it,” Packer says. “He said, ‘Let’s get down there and see what happens.’ ”
“The people I admire in the show are the camera guys and the guys out there protecting me,” O’Neal says. “They were outside in the water, throwing chum in and I asked them, ‘You’re not scared?’ And they said, ‘A lot of times when sharks bite people it’s because they mistake them for food— and if we’re out here in the water and they know we’re not food they’re not going to bother us.’ ”
Things took a scary turn when O’Neal was underwater — and a shark actually got inside his cage. It’s the first time this has ever happened in the 30-year history of Shark Week.
“The space between the [cage’s] bars was different than normal and the shark was able to wiggle into the cage,” Packer says. “Shaq hasn’t moved that fast since he was in the NBA.”