Want to feel old? Shaq and Manute Bol's sons play high school basketball together.
Shareef O'Neal, high school basketball star and son of Shaquille O'Neal, committed Wednesday to play collegiately for Arizona.
So I did what any self-respecting college hoops fan does when a major recruit announces his college decision: obsessively lurked through his Twitter timeline. (Yup, sports makes us all do weird things from time to time. Go sports!)
Mild self-loathing soon gave way to a serious 'Woah, dude' moment. Get this: Shaq's son and Manute Bol's son are now wrecking shop together in the world of elite amateur basketball. Better yet, they're totally friends.
Behold, for instance, this very heart-warming interaction on Twitter.
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Shareef even classifies them as "brothers."
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That's Shareef and Bol wearing the uniforms of California Supreme, the Amateur Athletic Union team they're both playing for this spring. (For the uninitiated, AAU at its highest level is basically the NBA of high school hoops, in which teenagers play in tournaments across the country all spring and summer before the watchful, judging eyes of hundreds of college coaches with scholarships to offer.)
Shareef's dad, of course, needs no introduction -- he's Shaq. But Manute Bol is a legend in his own right despite averaging less than three points per game in a nine-year NBA career; 7-foot-7 centers from Sudan who block shots as well as launch three-pointers aren't soon forgotten. He also tirelessly dedicated himself to activism aimed at helping Sudan before dying in 2010.
Anyway, back to the kids now.
Both Shareef O'Neal and Bol Bol are high school juniors. Shareef is a 6-foot-8, 205-pound forward ESPN ranks 19th in the class of 2018. Bol is 7-foot-1, 225 pounds and ranked 41st in the class of 2018 by ESPN. Bol has yet to choose a college.
Here are the two young stars playing together during a tournament earlier this month.
Anyway, to reiterate: Those are the teenage sons of Shaquille O'Neal and Bol Bol dominating the high school hoops world.
Congrats to them. And congrats to the rest of us on officially being old now.
Sam Laird is Mashable's Senior Sports Reporter. He covers the wide, weird world of sports from all angles -- as well as occasional other topics -- from Mashable's San Francisco bureau. Before joining Mashable in November 2011, his freelance work appeared in publications including the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Slam, and East Bay Express. Sam is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and basketball and burritos take up most of his spare time. Follow him on Twitter @samcmlaird.
