David Beckham was left red-faced after NBA icon Shaquille O’Neal found his wallet on the street in Beverly Hills and gave the football legend an ultimatum.
NBA icon Shaquille O’Neal regaled audiences with a side-splitting story about the time he stumbled upon David Beckham’s wallet in Los Angeles. The towering basketball legend, who boasts four NBA championships—three with the Los Angeles Lakers and one with the Miami Heat—shared the anecdote during an appearance on ‘The Late Late Show with James Corden’.
Football megastar Beckham, famed for his transfer to LA Galaxy from Real Madrid in 2007 and now a co-owner of Inter Miami, has been pivotal in luring football greats such as Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, and Luis Suarez to the club. In a humorous exchange, while sitting next to Beckham’s spouse Victoria, O’Neal recounted the Beverly Hills episode with his trademark wit.
He humorously admitted that his first instinct upon finding the wallet was to pocket the cash until he realised it belonged to Beckham. “I was walking one day in Beverly Hills and I found a wallet,” O’Neal quipped. “Usually when I find wallets I just take all the money out and I just throw them, but this was a nice wallet.”
Upon discovering Beckham’s ID inside, rather than handing it over to a desk clerk, O’Neal decided to personally return it to Beckham, not without first jokingly demanding a hefty ransom. “First I played a joke, I was like ‘I have your wallet, it’s going to cost you a million dollars to get it back’, but he knew it was me. [Beckham said] ‘Shaq, stop playing’. I was like ‘Dave, I found your wallet’.”, reports the Mirror.
“The funny thing is he [Beckham] said ‘There was some money in this wallet, you know what happened? ‘And I was like ‘nope’.”
NBA legend O’Neal retired in 2012 after a glittering career playing for teams such as the Lakers, Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers, Phoenix Suns, and the Boston Celtics. In 2000, he bagged the league MVP and made the All-Star lineup an impressive 15 times.
Football icon Beckham hung up his boots in 2013, ending his career at Paris Saint-Germain during the 2012/13 season. The gifted midfielder retired with a record of 127 goals and 225 assists across 724 club appearances, including stints at top-tier teams like Man United, PSG, LA Galaxy, AC Milan, and Real Madrid.
Off the pitch, Beckham’s ventures include co-owning Inter Miami and League Two’s Salford City, where he shares ownership with fellow Man United alumni Gary Neville, Nicky Butt, Phil Neville, Ryan Giggs, and Paul Scholes.
