Shaquille O’Neal admits he was the problem in his marriage to ex-wife Shaunie Henderson.
“I was a d–khead,” the former basketball player, 50, told People in his new cover story published Monday. “You don’t know how good you got something ’til it’s gone.”
Though O’Neal did not elaborate on what he did to consider himself a “d–khead,” this isn’t the first time he has taken the blame for how his union with the “Basketball Wives” alum, 47, ended in 2011.
“I was bad,” he cryptically said in the April 19 episode of “The Pivot Podcast,” adding, “She was awesome. She really was. It was all me.”
While the four-time NBA champion did not reveal “what [he] was doing” wrong then either, he did confess that he “wasn’t protecting [Henderson] and protecting those vows.”
“Sometimes when you live that double life, you get caught up. I’m not going to say it was her. It was all me,” he continued.
O’Neal added that Henderson did everything she could to have a stable marriage, including giving birth to their four “beautiful kids,” managing the “corporate stuff” and taking care of their home.
“It was just all me,” he said. “Sometimes, when you make a lot of mistakes like that, you can’t really come back from that.”
The former Los Angeles Lakers star and Henderson tied the knot in 2002. Five years later, the couple separated but reconciled shortly after. She filed for divorce a second time in 2009, and it was finalized in 2011.
The exes share four children together: Shareef, 22, Amirah, 21, Shaqir, 19, and Me’arah, 16.
Henderson has since moved on, marrying pastor Keion Henderson in a lavish ceremony in Anguilla in May.