Shaquille O’Neal not impressed by Dwight Howard dominating Taiwan: That league reminds me of Life Time Fitness

DeMarcus Cousins is moving and will join his fellow compatriot Dwight Howard in the T1-League. Earlier in the season, we saw Howard, who was denied a contract extension by the Lakers, move forward to free agency only to be rejected again as no team was willing to match his contract expectations. In the end, the former NBA champion decided to join the Taoyuan Leopards in T1 League. -via Taiwan News / November 24, 2022

It was reported that another NBA star, 32-year-old DeMarcus Cousins, also known as “Boogie,” will be joining Dwight Howard in Taiwan’s T1 League very soon. Media outlets on Wednesday (Nov. 23) reported that DeMarcus Cousins is preparing to move to Taiwan, based on a tip from a sports reporter at UDN, Lee Yi-Shen (李亦伸), and several anonymous T1 players. -via Taiwan News / November 24, 2022

There has still been no public confirmation from the T1 League or Cousins about his signing, and it is still unknown which team Cousins will join. However, a TVBS report suggests that it will be a team based in southern Taiwan, which would be either the Tainan TSG Ghosthawks, or the Kaohsiung Aquas. The Basketball Network published a report quoting Cousins as saying “Hi Dwight, I’m coming!” It noted that Cousins became a free agent earlier this year after the Denver Nuggets did not renew his contract. -via Taiwan News / November 24, 2022

Shaquille O’Neal will soon be the primary subject of a career-spanning documentary series aptly named “Shaq.” While fans would assume that late Lakers legend Kobe Bryant would play a rather large role in the series, it looks like that may not be the case. The reason for that is because Bryant’s family reportedly requested that O’Neal and the rest of the creators behind the upcoming series “reduce the amount” of Bryant in the project. “I think there’s a really strong amount of Kobe,” director Robert Alexander said. “There’s two sides to it.” -via Lakers Daily / November 22, 2022

He added that plans did have to change slightly based on the Bryant family’s request. “But to be transparent, we also got to a point where we had a certain amount of their story in the film,” Alexander continued. “Kobe’s family essentially requested that we reduce the amount of Kobe we have in the film.” When interviewer Rich Eisen asked why, Alexander made it clear that the team decided to respect the family’s wishes. “I’m not totally sure, but out of respect for their wishes we did it, we went ahead and we complied. … So I’m very proud of what we ended up with, as far as the amount of Kobe content that we have, that relates to Shaq’s story, but at the end of the day it’s a Shaq film.” -via Lakers Daily / November 22, 2022

But as SHAQ, a four-part docu series premiering on HBO Nov. 23 reveals, there’s more to the big man than meets the eye, including a tough childhood in a military family that moved constantly. “Every time I went to a place, I made my name quickly,” O’Neal says in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. “I’d find out who ‘the guy’ was, study him, and I’d beat him up. Take his spot. Everybody knew who I was.” After a nearly life-changing schoolyard fight — “I almost killed a kid,” admits O’Neal. “They showed me the jail” — he changed his tactics for fitting in. “I shifted everything into becoming the class clown. Just to make people like me. It was [another] mechanism for [dealing with my insecurity]. I wasn’t a leader yet. I was a follower on the wrong path.” -via People / November 22, 2022