*A school event for one of Shaunie Henderson’s children became the setting for a discovery that changed her marriage.
The “Basketball Wives” star once described how she realized Shaquille O’Neal had been unfaithful. According to Basketball Network, she traced the moment to a BlackBerry mix-up during their marriage, when she unknowingly carried his phone instead of her own.
“Our Blackberries got switched,” Shaunie said. “I went to my baby’s play at school, and I was like, ‘Damn, my phone is going off a lot.’ Just girl, after girl, after girl, like ‘Baby, last night what you did.'”
Before that discovery, Henderson and O’Neal had built a public life around family and basketball. They met in 1998, married in 2002, and welcomed four children together.
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The messages pushed Henderson into a confrontation she later recounted on the VH1 series.
“I went to the arena, and I went to that garage. Not only did I flatten tires, bust a few windows, I wrote on the hood of his car, ‘I cheat on my wife.’ I ain’t s–t with a knife. I wrote it on the hood and down the side of the car. He had to drive that s–t on four flats, with the messages all around it. I drove right on the side of his a– blowing the horn, cause I wanted people to like see. ‘Beep beep.’ The whole ride, the whole ride,” she recalled.
The couple separated in 2009 and finalized their divorce in 2011. O’Neal later took responsibility for the marriage ending and admitted he had been a “serial cheater.”
“I tell my sons all the time, a man has three jobs when it comes to a woman: protect, provide and love,” O’Neal stated. “Shaunie’s married. I’m happy for her… I’m still gonna love her. She’s still my wife.”
Henderson later married Houston pastor and author Keion Henderson, eleven years after her divorce from O’Neal. Although O’Neal dated publicly after the split, he never remarried. In her memoir, Shaunie confessed that she didn’t love him during their relationship.
“Looking back, I don’t know that I was ever really in love with the man,” she writes. “But I was in love with the idea of being married to the man I had a family with. I was in love with the idea of building a life together. I truly did enjoy spending time with him. [NBA] road trips gave me a chance to be with my husband and experience the NBA life for a little while.”
A day after the book’s release, Shaq responded on Instagram: “I understand… I wouldn’t have been in love with me either. Wishing you all the best. All love, Shaq.”
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: Shaunie Henderson Claims Shaq Viewed Cheating as an ‘Ego Boost’
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