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Shaq will swim, hit, volley vs. other sports stars

NBA star Shaquille O’Neal is getting ready to multitask.

The four-time hoops champion, who joins the Cleveland Cavaliers next season, will star in Shaq Vs., an ABC reality series that pits him against top athletes in their own sports.

Filming begins Wednesday in Pittsburgh, where Shaq takes on Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in football. Future hour-long episodes will pit him against Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, retired boxer Oscar De La Hoya, St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols, tennis pro Serena Williams and beach volleyball Olympians Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.

O’Neal, 37, says he also hopes to book pal Lance Armstrong for a cycling competition once the Tour de France ends.

The series is set to premiere Aug. 18 and will air Tuesdays at 9 ET/PT.

O’Neal says he came up with the idea as a fun way to help train for the NBA season and figured sports fans “would really want to see an athlete play another sport.” He knew most of the athletes and recruited some of them on Twitter.

ABC was immediately interested. “He’s very playful, almost everyone can relate to him. He has a fun sort of childish persona, and at the same time he’s a superstar,” says John Saade, co-chief of ABC’s reality programming, says of the 7-foot-1 O’Neal. “Our real hope is you come for the absurdity but you stay for the sport.”

Each episode is to include preliminary challenges, banter from news conferences, interaction with needy kids, and O’Neal and his rival negotiating a handicap. The laughs come from “trash talking,” but “when it comes to competing, there is no joking,” O’Neal says.

At the finish is the marquee event, usually on the athlete’s home turf, but there’s no cash prize: “Bragging rights are always better than any monetary prize,” O’Neal says.

He says he’s “not that skilled at tennis” or in a baseball home-run derby, though he expects to excel at football and swimming. But how would his rivals do in a basketball contest if the tables were turned? “They’d be good, but not good enough,” he says.

O’Neal is one of the NBA’s top stars and, over a 17-year career, has played for Orlando, the Los Angeles Lakers, Miami and Phoenix. He’s also no stranger to entertainment: He has appeared in movies and has had a side career as a rap artist. In 2007 he had his first ABC summer series, Shaq’s Big Challenge, in which he helped overweight kids lose pounds in Florida. (That show averaged fewer than 5 million viewers an episode.)

ABC cleared O’Neal’s participation with the Cavaliers; he’s scheduled to report for NBA training camp Sept. 15.