Given their stature among the all-time greats of the NBA, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kobe Bryant have far lesser MVP awards than they should have. Both of them have a total of 2 MVPs, while Steve Nash has two of his own. Shaq’s longtime studio partner Charles Barkley, being the instigator of chaos on NBA on TNT, alludes to it occasionally. He loves poking the 4x NBA champ. And Shaq loves to threaten Barkley with a punch.
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The Chuckster brought it up last month when the Inside the NBA crew was discussing why Joel Embiid deserved to win the MVP over Nikola Jokic. The Diesel, much like 18 years ago when Nash was picked over him (in 05′) and Kobe (in 06′) for the MVP, didn’t keep his distaste for himself.
When Shaquille O’Neal threatened to smack Charles Barkley for saying Steve Nash deserved the MVP over him and Kobe Bryant
It was a typical night on the TNT set. A back-and-forth between The Big Aristotle and the Round Mound of Rebounds was in the making. Barkley brought up how Steve Nash, despite being not as good a player as Kobe and Shaq, deserved to win the MVP over the two in 05′ and 06′. It obviously didn’t sit well with O’Neal.
“Chuck, you lucky I’m not taking my medicine because I’d have fought your big a*s on that,” O’Neal said on Inside the NBA with a smirk while Barkley kept defending his point saying the Suns had a better regular season than Shaq’s Heat that year.
In the 04’-05’ season, Nash led the Suns to a 62-20 record, while they were just 29-53 a season before his arrival there. The point guard averaged 15.5 points, 11.5 assists, 3.3 rebounds, and a steal per game, playing 75 games for the Phoenix team that finished #1 in the West.
Shaq, who thinks he put up 30 that year, had 22.9 points per game along with 10.4 rebounds and 2.7 blocks for the #1 seed Heat (59-23) in the East.
The next season, Nash averaged career-high 18.8 points, 4.2 rebounds, and led the league in assists with 10.5 per game. He helped the Suns finish #2 in the West with no Amar’e Stoudemire. And he did this with an almost brand-new starting line-up. Kobe managed to average over 35 points, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists per game for the 7th-seed Lakers.
O’Neal also said that Nash didn’t deserve the MVP because his team went out of the Playoffs in the 1st or the 2nd round. However, it was in the 2005 Conference Finals when the eventual NBA champs, San Antonio Spurs, eliminated the Suns.
Ironically, Embiid is now out after the 2nd round of the 2023 Playoffs. Meanwhile, Jokic is leading his team toward the NBA Finals with a 2-0 lead against Shaq and Kobe’s former team.
MVPs generally do not win the Championship
Since the turn of the century, it has been quite rare for a regular season MVP to win the trophy that matters the most, an NBA championship.
Shaquille O’Neal in 2000, Tim Duncan in 2003, LeBron James in 2012 and 2013, and Stephen Curry in 2015 are the only ones to have won both, a ring and an MVP award in the same year. That’s just five in 23 years!
It may be that the players who win the greatest individual honor, feel content with what they have won, or perhaps the honor itself is a curse. So, missing out on a couple of MVPs might have worked in Shaq’s favor. Otherwise, he might have had a championship or two less.
