'I want that to be a part of my path. Like, 'He went through this when he was young to kind of alter his path but he made it back to a straight pathway again.''
's son, Shareef O'Neal, is opening up about undergoing open-heart surgery in 2018 when he was just 18 years old. The former UCLA/LSU player and now NBA G League player recalls thinking his basketball career was done and over with.
A few weeks before joining the UCLA team -- and coming in as the top-ranked basketball recruit in California -- Shareef was diagnosed with anomalous coronary artery, which"It was hard because I was ranked the No. 1 player in California at the time in my class," he shared."And I was going to a school in California. So, the momentum was going really steep, like up, up hill. Everybody was excited. When they told me, I honestly thought I wasn’t gonna be able to play basketball again.
"One thing they told me is a lot of people have this but they don’t know 'cause you have to do this one certain test," Shareef said."So, you can play basketball for the rest of your life and you can possibly be fine, but one day it could happen. So, it’s kind of like you’re playing with your life if you choose not to get surgery."
The recovery was brutal. Before surgery, Shareef said he weighed 215 pounds. After surgery, his weight went down to around 170 pounds.Shareef said he was force-fed in the hospital because he had no appetite, but he also had to be careful how much weight he carried.
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