Shaquille O’Neal is arguably the most dominant NBA player of all time. In his heyday, there was no stopping the Big Aristotle. Not even somebody like Hakeem Olajuwon could put the clamps on the 7ft 1in tall, 350-400 pound, juggernaut that he was during his 19-year career. However, right when all coaches had given up on trying to contain him, Gregg Popovich came up with Hack-a-Shaq and changed the game for the big man. The strategy was so effective that O’Neal was often visibly angered by it after losing an important game. In fact, one such occasion cost him $295,000 for calling out the officiating and NBA commissioner David Stern.
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After a 3-peat, the Lakers lost in just the 2nd round of the 2003 Playoffs. It was the Spurs who used that technique, brought forth by their head coach, very effectively. O’Neal and the Lakers were in redemption mode in 2003-04 and wanted to win it all, again. By February 2004, Shaq started making sure that he wouldn’t go through the same in the upcoming post-season, and head coach Phil Jackson stood up for him in it. He shared the story of the same on his IG recently.
When Shaquille O’Neal raised his voice against officiating and lost close to $300k
19 years ago, in February 2004, after putting up a season-high 36-point performance against the Toronto Raptors, Shaquille O’Neal went off on the officials and sent a message to the NBA commissioner. The Raptors team had gone too far with hack-a-Shaq and angered The Big Shamrock.
“My message to (commissioner) David Stern is, ‘get some people in there that understand the game and don’t try to take over the game because people pay good money to see good athletes play,’” said O’Neal and followed it with “Don’t give a s**t” rant, which you can hear him say in the Instagram post by ‘Basketball Videos‘ below.
He shared the same on his Instagram story, of which Stephen B. Smith shared the screenshot, on Twitter.
The NBA, in return, handed him a one-game suspension without pay and a hefty fine, which cost him $295,000 in total. Phil Jackson felt a fine should have been enough, and that the suspension was too much. And so, he stood up for the Big man and called out the NBA for its ‘vindictiveness’.
“The league is known for its vindictiveness,” Jackson said, according to ESPN. “But we didn’t anticipate a suspension.”
Indeed, that was too much for something that actually made the game look ugly. Still, you’d think O’Neal would be careful about his post-game interviews in the next 7 years of his career. Yet, there were only more fines to come.
Shaq got a $35,000 fine in 2010 for blasting officials
O’Neal did not take winning casually even at the latter end of his career. While playing for the Celtics in a Christmas day game, O’Neal was able to play just 12 minutes because of bad officiating and far too many controversial calls on him.
After the game he made a statement about referee Bob Delaney, “I guess they come out to see No. 26 [Bob Delaney] play. He was a great player out there today.”
The NBA fined him $35,000 in response, for which he had a hilarious reaction while hugging Kevin Garnett and shouting “Why?” You can take a look at it in the YouTube clip by ‘Guru Luger‘ below.
With the 100s of millions he was making on and off the court, it wasn’t much big a dent in his pocket. But calling the soft officiating was a must for superstars like him. If more players took the same route, perhaps we wouldn’t be where we are with the officiating these days.
