PR.com (Allison Kugel): How does it feel to be retired from basketball and having closed that chapter of your life after 20 years with the NBA?

Shaquille O’Neal: It feels good. I went out on a positive note. I’ve more than prepared myself for this day and it’s just time to do something new; it’s time to do something different.

PR.com: It seemed like once you were with your final team, the Boston Celtics (from 2010 – 2011), you had more of a team mentality and the ego was no longer there. Is that something that just came naturally with age or did you learn lessons from some past mistakes?

Shaquille O’Neal: It just came with age, and it was sort of a thing where you didn’t want to fight with the system, because a lot of other times I did it my way. I was a successful player doing it my way, but when you get older… people start to lose confidence in age so I wasn’t really trying to go up there and do things that I used to do in the past.

PR.com: In your book (Shaq Uncut: My Story) you admit that during the eight years you played with the Los Angeles Lakers you thought you were going to be a Laker for life. Had your relationship with Kobe Bryant been better, do you think you would have been a Laker up until you retired this year?

Shaquille O’Neal: Yeah, probably. But, you know, as a leader you have to either worry about the task or about the relationship. As a leader I was more task-focused. The task was to win a championship and I was a leader, and I’m doing it my way. I didn’t care who liked it, you know? Leaders always have those two things to go up against. Like, if you’re in an office are you going to be nicer to this person because you want a better relationship with them, or are you going to do it your way? And, like, if you look at the outcome, the outcome was favorable.

PR.com: PR.com: Two coaches that you talk a lot about in your book, Phil Jackson, your coach when you were with the Los Angeles Lakers, and Pat Riley, your coach from the Miami Heat, were two significant people in your life. What life lessons did you take away from each of those men?

Shaquille O’Neal: Phil Jackson was very cool, calm and collected. He was a guy that was being all respect and didn’t go and just do everything the same way. And I think because of that discipline we were able to win three out of four [championships]. And I think he never intervened between the whole me and Kobe thing because it did drive both of us. We were both so good, more than the other, that it made us play a little harder than everybody else, and he knew that, and he understood that.

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