Chances are if you were a kid who was born in the late ’90s or early 2000s, you might be named after Shaquille O’Neal or Hakeem Olajuwon.
They are two of the greatest players in NBA history and, really, both made some pretty huge claims to fame back then.
Olajuwon won back-to-back NBA titles with the Houston Rockets in 1994 and 1995 and was very obviously one of the best centers in his era. Shaq was one of his rivals throughout the 1990s and they actually met in the NBA Finals once. Shaq lost to Olajuwon, but eventually won some titles himself in the early 2000s with the Lakers.
So chances seem pretty high that Shaquille Olajuwon Mason and Saquil Akeem Barrett would be named after the two of them. They were two influential, great athletes, during their day.
But what are the chances that they’d both make it to the NFL someday? And, dwindling that down even further, that they’d play on the same team?
Whatever the chances are it actually happened. The two Shaqs are playing for the Bucs. And they’re named a bit differently after the two same people.
The Athletic’s Greg Auman brought our attention to it.
This is insane. We mentioned that new Bucs guard Shaq Mason is Shaquille Olajuwon Mason, named after the two former NBA stars. Well, his new teammate, Bucs pass-rusher Shaq Barrett, was born a year earlier in 1992, and is Shaquil Akeem Barrett, named after the same two players.
— Greg Auman (@gregauman) March 24, 2022
That’s pretty wild, man. This is lightning in a bottle. Wow.
We’ve known for a while that the two had similar names but we didn’t know they were that similar. And we also didn’t know they’d eventually play on the same team someday. That’s a pretty wild circumstance.
Thank goodness they play on two different sides of the ball because, otherwise, that could’ve gotten wild. Those Shaq vs. Shaq practice matchups are going to be pretty fun, though.
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