He is playing a character of sorts. It is a shtick to get him noticed. The man who raised him was a career army guy and taught him to not accept mediocrity. He married Shaq's mom as a single mother with her baby daddy in prison.
He is very supportive of the military and LE. He got a criminal justice degree and is/was a sworn LE, and it's not one of those bullshit badges for money schemes. He has stated more than once he would have gone in to LE had ne not played basketball.
He is notoriously generous with both his time and money. One of his hobbies is to go to Walmart and pay off people's Christmas layaways anonymously, and Best Buy looking for families needing laptops for their children's education and buying them whatever they want. As a dad, he has a rule for his kids. "You got to get two degrees to get my cheese." He doesn't fund any of their wants unless they get a bachelor's and a master's degree minimum.
When he took part ownership in Papa John's one of his big pushes to executives was how to get family pizza nights more affordable for lower income families because he grew up with not much.
He has an ego for sure but he's a HOF player and absolutely dominated the game in his prime except from the charity line. There are worse guys to bag on out there IMHO.