*Life as an NBA Mrs. is more than being attached to one of the league’s standouts. For Shaunie (Nelson/O’Neal) Henderson, the road to WAGdom is a journey filled with ups and a good bit of downs.
Not only for the former apple of her eye, Shaquille O’Neal, but for the women who gave her no respect until she entered the NBA WAGS (wives and girlfriends) club as Mrs. O’Neal. Even with the pair sharing and raising their son Shareef and Nelson/O’Neal’s older son Myles together, any sign of approval was nonexistent before the pair jumped the broom.
“At first I thought all this posturing and dismissing me was just about power games,” Shaunie Henderson (as she is now known) wrote in her bestselling memoir “Undefeated” regarding the treatment she received from other Lakers’ WAGs. “But then I figured out the real reason they were shunning me. NBA side pieces were (and still are) a dime a dozen.”
Although it was a poke at herself, the reality was that Henderson had to prove she was more than the typical side piece that was a short-lived fixture in the lives of the NBA sports stars. A reality that was all too familiar for the WAGs, according to Essentially Sports.
“These wives had seen so many young women come and go that they figured any new girl who didn’t have a ring on her finger would be gone in the next twenty-four hours. Why bother getting to know her or investing in her if she’s just going to be kicked to the curb by the end of the road trip?” the ex-Mrs. Shaq O’Neal wrote. “And so the wives treated me, and others like me, as though we didn’t exist and didn’t matter. When the Lakers played the Indiana Pacers for the championship in 2000, and I went to Indianapolis with the team, none of the wives even spoke to me.”
Despite the setback, Henderson (then known as Shaunie Nelson) achieved WAG status when she married O’Neal in 2002. Already established as a Los Angeles-based film promoter and single mother, Nelson/Henderson was a force on her own before meeting O’Neal. Two years into their relationship, Shareef, their first child together, was born in 2000. A second child, Amirah, arrived in 2001, with two more children joining the family in 2009.
After finalizing their divorce in 2011, O’Neal and Nelson/Henderson went their separate ways, with the latter turning her marriage experience into gold with the creation of the show, “Basketball Wives” In her book, the matriarch, who is an executive producer on the series, revealed “Basketball Wives,” was a necessary step to survive post-NBA life. The series was Nelson’s effort to give her friends a platform to be themselves irrespective of their relationships with NBA players, something she was denied before she married O’Neal, Essentially Sports noted.
The site goes on to highlight the moment in Henderson’s memoir when O’Neal’s infidelity before she married the basketball great was confirmed. The incident took place at the Staples Center, as a woman and her friends confronted Nelson, who was with her young sons at the time.
“That’s my man,” the woman declared for O’Neal while claiming that having a kid doesn’t make Nelson/Henderson a permanent presence in the sports icon’s life.
The situation got so heated that O’Neal’s friends stepped in to cool things off while Shaunie was shaken. Although she never told her then-husband about the incident, the damage was done. O’Neal’s unfaithfulness to her was known. Looking back on what happened, Henderson confirmed she fell into a pattern of denial till she finally divorced O’Neal.
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