Over the course of a career that has earned Shaq hundreds of millions of dollars, the basketball star and current analyst on "Inside the NBA" made many extremely lucrative endorsement deals, including Reebok and Burger King, but there's one he passed out on for a completely random reason: Shaquille O'Neal's Starbucks deal.
On the season premiere of "In Depth With Graham Bensinger," the 43 year-old athlete spoke to the interviewer about some of the things he regretted in his lifetime, and he mentioned one shocking bit of trivia nobody ever knew about until this point: the reason Shaquille O'Neal's Starbucks deal didn't go through.
According to Yahoo! News, at some point in the past, there was a possibility of seeing Shaquille O'Neal's Starbucks endorsement, as the company's CEO, Howard Schultz, explained a new strategy the Seattle-based coffee chain was planning at the time.
"So Howard comes and says, 'Shaq, I wanna give you the opportunity to go in with me and open up these Starbucks franchises in African American communities.' And I'm always the guy that if I don't believe in it, can't do it," explained the athlete, The Huffington Post reports, when telling the story of the failed Shaquille O'Neal Starbucks flop. "So I looked in the great Howard Schultz's face and said, 'Black people don't drink coffee, sir. I don't think it's gonna work.'"
According to Sports World News, the whole thing happened because, at the time of the interview, Shaq himself didn't drink coffee and, since he'd never seen black people drink it, he was convinced it was a "white person's drink."
Obviously, years later and seeing the major effect Starbucks has had throughout the world (and on different ethnicities), Shaq still looks back on this as one of his worst business decisions ever.
Watch a clip from the Shaquille O'Neal Starbucks interview below!
