O'Neal declared his eligibility for the 1996 NBA Draft straight out of high & was selected per Portland Trail Blazers with the Seventeenth pick of the number 1 around. Within Portland, O'Neal spent virtually all of his period coming off of the bench, averaging as much as quadruplet points by the game. He became a immature streaming video player to begin an NBA game at a age of Xviii years & a single year.

When you took a 2000 off-season, O'Neal was traded to the Indiana Pacers with Joe Kleine in exchange for Dale Davis. At Indiana, O'Neal was known as the starter & became the standout streaming video player, averaging Twelve.Nine points around his foremost year, 3 days to a higher degree any year he experienced at Portland. His norm continued to improve in the as a consequence seasons. In the 2001-02 year, O'Neal averaged Nineteen.Zero points, Decade.Five rebounds & Deuce.Terzetto blocks off by a game en route to winning the NBA Most Improved Player Award. He too earned his foremost NBA All-Star Game selection and his number 1 All-NBA Team selection, being selected to the 100%-NBA Third Team.

In the 2002-03 year, O'Neal continued to improve & became one of just ternion NBA players to average at least Twenty points & X rebounds by the game. He was selected to begin in the NBA All-Star Game and was again selected to the Tons-NBA Third Team.

Per 2003-04 year, O'Neal was averaging Xx.I points & 10 rebounds by a game, leading the Pacers to the best record inside the NBA, earning an Everthing-NBA 2nd Team choice & placing third in MVP balloting. In a playoffs, he helped lead the Pacers to an Eastern Conference finals appearance against the Detroit Pistons. Even so, he was uneffective because of injury, & a Pacers wasted to the Pistons around sestet games.

He was the member of the U.S.The. men's five that finished the unsatisfying sixth place in the 2002 World Basketball Championships in Indianapolis. Though he helped a U.S. team qualify for the Olympics in the period of the 2003 Tournament of the Americas & was a member of the 'core' for a Olympics, the knee injury forced him to drop away from the national team that competed in the 2004 Olympics.

O'Neal has been known as the poster tike for thus-supposed prep-to-pro players, for his patience and determination to turn into the star streaming video player in the NBA. He has too evolved into a role of team leader for the Pacers & will be counted in to try and lead the children to the NBA Finals. In November 19, 2004 however, O'Neal became involved around a massive brawl at the end of the game against Detroit, & was filmed striking the Pistons supporter on the basketball court. Following, O'Neal was suspended indefinitely by Commissioner David Stern while a NBA investigated the incident. In November 21, O'Neal received a 25-game suspension for his section in the brawl. Nevertheless, thanks to a urging of an arbiter inside upright prior to Christmas, Jermaine won the 10-game reduction inside his phrase & has since returned to action by using the Pacers.

O'Neal scored the career-high 55 points inside Indiana's 116-99 at home triumph all over a Milwaukee Bucks on January 4 2005. He likewise volunteered to donate $1,000 to the people of 2004's deadly tsunamis for every point he scored in the January 6 game against San Antonio, as the portion of a joint donation per SFX Professional. He scored 32 points against a Spurs inside a losing effort, however decided instead to donate $55,000 according to a nature and severity of his sooner game against the Bucks.

Controversy
In June, Heptad, 2005, he was ''Punk'd by four people, a Punk'd'' record (Ashton Kutcher, Allen Iverson, and Todd Bridges are three of four notorious). It wholly sent O'Neal to the equivalent person in which O'Neal is denied from either starting Allen Iverson's birthday party.