“Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said ‘Is Shaquille O’Neal that great? Lakers getting swept!’”: When The Big Diesel implied Donovan Mitchell should stop complaining and prove something
Shaquille O’Neal is unquestionably one of the biggest legends in basketball, so he thinks you need to have a G-14 classification complaint to him for his takes.
O’Neal is as humble as the best in any business come. He is not as narcissistic as Michael Jordan or as desperate as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to prove his worth despite being a top-5 player all time, but he sometimes gets cocky while critiquing other players.
The Lakers’ 7-foot-giant won LA and Kobe Bryant three championships (Kobe’s first three) while winning 3 Finals MVPs. Do you understand the weight of winning the best player’s award over The Black Mamba while being on his side not once or twice but 3-times?
That would have been a crime if he was humble. His toughness and quick wits allowed him to be one of the best players on the court and still do to be one of the best TV personalities and businessman off it.
And becoming an NBA analyst alongside Charles Barkley, who again was one of the biggest entertainers in the business a decade before O’Neal joined TNT, demanded that The Big Aristotle be what he became over the years.
Shaquille O’Neal brought up Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s criticism of him to shut Spida up
His criticism of current NBA players in that heaviest of voices never sits well with most of them. He lights up on the sets of Inside the NBA whenever he gets the opportunity.
JaVale McGee, Rudy Gobert, and Donovan Mitchell are some names who have received consistent obliteration at the hands of the 4x NBA champ.
Although Shaq has moved on from McGee’s roast over time, maybe after realising that the big man is just too intelligent to be the bunny of O’Neal’s Shaqtin A Fool, he has been an extensive and open critique of the Jazz duo over the past couple of years.
Shaq took unnecessary shots at both Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert in this early season. If those are his opinions, then whatever, but you can’t just come back from that expect them to be all cool and receptive. Mitchell very politely said, ‘FOH,’ lol.pic.twitter.com/a11iJaptoJ
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) January 22, 2021
And when the Utah point guard responded to his criticism after having it for too long, Shaq cited Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s criticism of him when he teamed up with Kobe. They still got swept by The Mailman and John Stockton’s Jazz 4-0 in the same fashion his Orlando team used to get knocked out in the playoffs.
Just to put it out there, the Spida has still 1-less Playoff failure than Shaq before the latter won his first. He’d have to win a championship this season to be able to shut the big man up. Which team Mitchell would be in for that chase would be interesting to see in the upcoming months.
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