Shareef O’Neal, the son of Shaquille O’Neal, committed to play NCAA basketball for Arizona on Wednesday.
So, when a key recruit makes his college selection, I did what every self-respecting college basketball fan does: I compulsively stalked his Twitter timeline. (Sports do make us all do strange things now and again.) Go athletics!)
Mild self-pity quickly turned into a genuine ‘Woah, dude’ moment. In the realm of top amateur basketball, Shaq’s kid and Manute Bol’s son are currently wrecking shop together. Even better, they’re complete pals.
Take, for example, this really touching Twitter exchange.
They’re even referred to as “brothers” by Shareef.
Shareef and Bol are dressed in the California Supreme outfits, the AAU squad with whom they are both playing this spring. (For those unfamiliar with AAU, it’s effectively the NBA of high school basketball, with adolescents competing in tournaments throughout the nation every spring and summer in front of hundreds of college coaches with scholarships to offer.)
Shaq is Shareef’s father, therefore he doesn’t need an introduction. Despite scoring fewer than three points per game throughout his nine-year NBA career, Manute Bol is a legend in his own right; 7-foot-7 centres from Sudan who block shots as well as launch three-pointers aren’t easily forgotten. Before his death in 2010, he also committed himself to action focused at assisting Sudan.
In 1991, Manute Bol was a member of the Philadelphia 76ers
Anyway, let’s go back to the kids.
Shareef O’Neal and Bol Bol are both juniors in high school. Shareef is a 6-foot-8, 205-pound forward who is ranked 19th in the 2018 recruiting class by ESPN. Bol is a 7-foot-1, 225-pound offensive lineman who is rated 41st in ESPN’s 2018 recruiting class. Bol hasn’t decided on a college yet.
During a competition earlier this month, the two young stars were seen playing together.
Anyway, they are Shaquille O’Neal and Bol Bol’s adolescent boys who are dominating the high school basketball globe.
They deserve congratulations. And kudos to the rest of us on reaching our formal retirement age.
