The cardiac arrest suffered by Bronny James this week in training did not leave Shareef O’Neal insensitive. For good reason, the son of Shaquille O’Neal had not been able to play his first year in college at UCLA because of heart problems. He even had open-heart surgery in December 2018, and finally resumed competition at the start of the following season.
Contacted by Good Morning America, the young interior revealed that he had exchanged with Bronny James, now back home to continue his recovery. He also said he was ready to support him in this new long and difficult process.
“I spoke to Bronny, I sent him a message, just to say: if you have any questions, you can ask me because I could probably answer them”, did he declare. “I know we’re going to tell him that people are praying for him and all that, but you don’t want to hear too much about it right now.” »
Will basketball still be possible?
If Shareef O’Neal went through difficult stages, perhaps similar to those that Bronny James is about to experience, the Shaq’s son mostly recovered, and was able to continue his career afterwards by signing in G- League when he left college with Team Ignite last season (5.1 points, 2.8 rebounds in 14 minutes on average over 28 games). But he also knows the questions that can cross Bronny James’ mind at the moment, to have also been there.
“When will I be able to come back? I can’t even walk now. What will my future look like? “And that’s when I realized that I didn’t know if basketball was going to be an option again,” he added, before sharing the encouragement given to him by his father. “He said to me, ‘If you get through this, you’ll be the fiercest man on the planet’, which kind of fueled my motivation and made me want to come back and get there.”
