Nick Anderson: Shaq Could Have Won 5-6 Titles in Orlando

Shaquille O’Neal’s former teammate in Orlando, Nick Anderson, is convinced The Diesel would have racked up a fistful of rings had he stayed with the Magic. From the Sentinel: “When Shaquille O’Neal left Orlando all those years ago, he potentially took a sixpack of NBA championships with him. This is what former Magic star and current Magic executive Nick Anderson contended when we interviewed him about Shaq’s retirement on our critically acclaimed radio show Thursday. ‘I’m honest when I say this, I think we would have had five or six championships,’ Anderson said of the mid-1990s Magic team he played on with Shaq, Penny Hardaway, Horace Grant and Co. Anderson also told the the story of the summer day in 1996 when he found out Shaq was leaving for the L.A. Lakers. ‘I was sitting at my home in Chicago watching the Olympics (in 1996) when a special bulletin came on and I happened to see the Big Fella (Shaq) holding a (Lakers) jersey standing next to Jerry West,” Anderson remembers. ‘I fell off the couch. Two minutes later, my phone rang and it was my dad calling to say, ‘You know, your championships just went to L.A.’ And how right he was. They (those championships) left and went to L.A.'”