The UK's Prince and Princess of Wales attended an NBA basketball match in the US state of Massachusetts on Wednesday during their first overseas trip since the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September. MIAMI – Shaquille O’Neal never passes up an opportunity to poke fun at his buddy Charles Barkley.
Mourning, who founded the youth center in 2003, has worked to see the facility expand from 18,000 to 56,000 square feet. It will open in the next 5-6 months, with the charter school welcoming 300 children, from kindergarten to eighth grade, into 14 classrooms. The facility can host 2,000 people at any given time.
Mourning visited a similar facility called Self Enhancement, Inc. or SEI in Portland in 2000, and wanted to replicate the concept in Miami. “We never really spoke,” O’Neal said. “He’d dunk on me, and I’d dunk on him. We’d elbow each other and act like we were going to fight.”They bridged the gap when Mourning re-signed with the Heat in March 2005, during his return from a kidney transplant. And O’Neal wished it didn’t take so long to become Mourning’s friend.
“What he doesn’t understand is if there’s no him, there’s no me. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. I owe him everything.”It’s why O’Neal asked Mourning to be on stage during his introduction into the Hall of Fame in 2016 – an honor Mourning was taken back by. And why O’Neal answers Mourning’s call to see this Overtown Youth Center project through.