The NFL Wild Card Round brought a few surprises, including the Commanders’ win over the Buccaneers and the Rams’ thrashing of the Vikings. The biggest surprise of the weekend, however, was that former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal got every outcome of the round right.
Shaq’s love of gambling is well-known. It’s common to see the Big Fella betting with his co-hosts of Inside the NBA, especially Charles Barkley, or with former colleagues, such as Jamal Crawford.
Despite his love of gambling, O’Neal isn’t very good at his predictions, usually ending up on the wrong side of the scoreboard. That’s why it was all the more surprising when his bets on the NFL Wild Card Round were perfect.
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Shaq’s NFL bet
In a post on his Instagram account, commentator Adam Lefkoe revealed that O’Neal had placed a parlay bet on the wild card round games. In the first, Lefkoe revealed: “Shaq is a Rams win away from turning $500 into $12K.”
As everyone knows, Los Angeles had no trouble beating Minnesota by a score of 27-9. With this result, they earned the ticket to the Divisional Round and guaranteed the Los Angeles Lakers former star a generous reward for his risk.
It should be noted that in a parlay bet, the bettor combines several individual bets into one. To win, you have to get all the outcomes right, otherwise, you lose all your money. In Shaq’s case, all of his predictions were right, multiplying his money by 24.
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Did Shaq cheat?
However, it may not have all been down to Big Aristotle. In a follow-up post in X (formerly Twitter), Lefkoe revealed that he had some influence on the bet. “I had Shaq predict all of the NFL Wildcard games. I parlayed those picks. Shaq got them all right.”
O’Neal had previously had difficulty with DraftKings’ betting process, so Lefkoe could have helped with that. Regardless of how much the analyst helped or not, Shaq should already be on his way to the bank to collect his winnings.