Shaquille O’Neal recalls throwing his Olympic medal out the window in a fit of rage: 'I was so pissed off'

"I drove home in my uniform, and I threw the goddamn medal out the window on 1-75," O'Neal said.

Shaquille O'Neal has just about as many accolades as any basketball player in history. However, he no longer has the hardware from one significant win.

In a new episode of his The Big Podcast, O'Neal says his in-game frustration at the 1996 Olympic gold medal game led him to toss the medal out of his car window on the way home from the ceremony.

"The Olympic Games, '96, I played throughout, helped them come back, win games," the Hall of Famer said. "And in the gold medal game, [coach] Lenny Wilkens says, 'Hey, this is probably David Robinson's last game, so he's gonna get more minutes.' I said, 'Cool.'"

However, he didn't know just how limited his minutes would be in that final Olympic contest. "He didn't play me at all until, like, the last two minutes. I was so pissed off, after the ceremony, I drove home in my uniform, and I threw the goddamn medal out the window on 1-75."

New Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins, a guest on the episode, incredulously asked if Shaq still has the medal. "No, I threw it away," O'Neal responded.

The gold medal-winning team, called Dream Team III, was the second Olympics in which active NBA players could participate, and it was the first time O'Neal was on the roster. The team also featured five players who were holdovers from the original '92 Dream Team, including Robinson and O'Neal's current Inside the NBA cohost, Charles Barkley.

With the '96 Games taking place in Atlanta, O'Neal drove south to Orlando, where he'd just completed his final season before he would join the Los Angeles Lakers.

"On the road, somewhere on the highway, there is an Olympic gold medal," The Big Podcast cohost Adam Lefkoe suggested. O'Neal, who added that he doesn't regret his actions, said he doesn't believe the medal has ever been found.

So commence basketball's greatest treasure hunt. There are only about 430 miles of I-75 between Atlanta and Orlando to search.

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