In September 2024, former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal threw Democratic nominee for vice president Tim Walz out of his Atlanta, Georgia, restaurant.

A rumor that the former NBA player Shaquille O’Neal threw Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, out of his restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia, circulated online in September 2024. For example, the Facebook page SpaceX Fanclub posted the claim on Sept. 7, alleging that O’Neal told Walz he was “a disappointment”:

The claim was also spread by Vernon Jones, a former state representative from Georgia, on X (formerly Twitter).

Some users left comments implying they had interpreted the rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events. However, there was no evidence the supposed restaurant debacle ever took place.

Rather, the rumor about O’Neal kicking Walz out of his restaurant originated with Esspots.com — a website that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature. Its About page states:

Welcome to Esspots.com, a website that specializes in satire, parody, and humor. Before you proceed to read our content, we would like to emphasize that nothing on this website is real. All of the articles, stories, and commentary found on Esspots.com are entirely fictitious and created for the purpose of entertainment only.

Esspots.com and the SpaceX Fanclub Facebook page have a history of making up stories for shares and comments, many of which Snopes has covered in the past.

In fact, their stories frequently reuse the concept of a high-profile restaurant owner kicking someone out of their restaurant. Snopes investigated similar satirical claims about Guy Fieri kicking out Robert De Niro and Gordon Ramsay kicking out the swimmer Lia Thomas earlier in 2024.

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.