Three weeks ago, Shaquille O’Neal said he was driving down a street in New York and saw Sean Rooks taking a casual stroll.
O’Neal smiled and pulled over and the two big men and former teammates on the Lakers talked for about five minutes, laughing and joking.
So when O’Neal learned that Rooks had died Tuesday night at the age of 46, probably from heart disease, O’Neal thought back to that precious moment in New York.
“He looked good too,” O’Neal said in a phone interview Wednesday. “We just talked to each other for about five minutes and shared some stories.