“4 Games to 2 in Favor of My Team”: Shaquille O’Neal Pits LeBron James and Michael Jordan’s Teams Against One Another

Shaquille O’Neal has been pretty active on Instagram lately during the offseason hiatus. On holiday from his broadcasting gig with TNT, the Big Diesel has been posing hypothetical questions to his followers regarding some of the most incredible imaginary matchups anyone can think of in the sport of basketball. Recently, Shaq was on the platform once again sharing a picture featuring two hypothetical Superteams that revolved around LeBron James and Michael Jordan. Featured on MJ’s squad, Shaq posed the question to his followers, “Who would win?” In O’Neal’s opinion, he and Jordan are coming out on top quite easily.

This isn’t the first time Shaq has shared two hypothetical teams for his followers to choose from. Of course, he usually features himself on at least one of these all-time teams, and almost every time he picks the team he is on to win. This time around it was no different as he found himself on a team of retired legends facing off against the best of the best in the modern-day NBA. Given the talent on display on both teams, it was a hard choice for Shaq’s 32,600,000 followers.

Shaquille O’Neal shares post pitting Michael Jordan’s all-time team against LeBron James’ team of current stars

Over the years, plenty of fans have had to pick between hypothetical teams on Shaq’s page on Instagram. Recently, the Big Aristotle shared some similar content, pitting a team led by Michael Jordan against another spearheaded by LeBron James.

MJ’s team included Shaq, Jordan himself, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. On the other hand, LeBron had Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, and Nikola Jokic alongside him. In addition to being completely stacked, both teams are filled with either current or future first-ballot Hall of Famers and all-time greats.

Both teams had some exceptional talents on display. However, as usual, Shaq chose the team he was on to win it all. With Jordan leading the lineup, O’Neal believed that his team wouldn’t even need seven games to win against LeBron’s modern superstars, predicting a 4-2 outcome. Shaq captioned the post:

“You already know my question. i say 4 games to 2 in favor of my team of course!”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by DR. SHAQUILLE O’NEAL Ed.D. (@shaq)

To be fair to Shaq, he probably is fair with his assessment. Just from a “fit” perspective, MJ’s team is perfect from start to finish. With Magic and Jordan in the backcourt and Larry Bird on the wing, the only issue is on the frontcourt, where it would be difficult to choose who would run the four spot. After all, neither Shaq nor Kareem can space the floor like the modern stars. On the other hand, LeBron’s team is pretty stacked as well, but would find it difficult to defend the likes of MJ and Shaq.

Shaq has often claimed the NBA was lucky that he and MJ never teamed up

From what we can see, Shaquille O’Neal is always enamored by the idea of being on Michael Jordan’s team. In fact, he was once quoted suggesting that the NBA got lucky that he and Jordan never teamed up in real life. They were two of the most dominant players in their position, and having them on the same team would have spelled trouble for the rest of the league.

@SHAQ clearly seems to agree with this post pic.twitter.com/hyM5cWmXS2

— Tonoy Sengupta (@TonoySengupta) April 28, 2023

At the end of the day, thinking about hypothetical scenarios is all well and good. However, reality is much more different and there’s no way of knowing what a team-up between Shaq and MJ would look like.