Shaquille O'Neal's Son Shareef Talks Undergoing Heart Surgery at Age 18

etonline.com:

Shaquille O'Neal's son, Shareef O'Neal, is opening up about undergoing open-heart surgery in 2018 when he was just 18 years old.

The former UCLA/LSU player and now NBA G League player recalls thinking his basketball career was done and over with.Speaking to his NBA G League teammate, Eric Mika, on Mika's podcast, Shareef admitted to dreaming that his legacy would one day be defined by how he bounced back from heart surgery and realized his potential in spite of a scary ordeal that pumped the brakes on his collegiate sports journey at the University of California, Los Angeles.«I want that to be a part of my path.

Like, 'He went through this when he was young to kind of alter his path but he made it back to a straight pathway again,'» the 23-year-old athlete explained. «I feel like In 20 years I want to be known as that kid who fought back from something that was life-changing and made his dreams come true.»A few weeks before joining the UCLA team — and coming in as the top-ranked basketball recruit in California — Shareef was diagnosed with anomalous coronary artery, which Stanford Health describes as a coronary artery that has an abnormality or malformation.«It was hard because I was ranked the No.

1 player in California at the time in my class,» he shared. «And I was going to a school in California. So, the momentum was going really steep, like up, up hill.