Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley are still finding new and innovative ways to make fun of each other. After working together for over 13 years, you’d think they would’ve exhausted all avenues, but somehow, they always find a way. This time, it involved playoff series sweeps, and the conversation came up when discussing Miami’s historic loss last night.
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Last night, the Cavs pulled off a 55-point win and completed their sweep over the Heat. This led to the Inside guys getting a reminder of their career lowlights. The studio brought up their largest margin of defeat.
For both Kenny and Chuck, the largest margin of defeat was 33 points, with Kenny losing to the Seattle Supersonics in ’96 and Chuck losing to the Houston Rockets in ’95. They came together to mock Shaq, whose largest loss was by 38 points, to Michael Jordan’s ’96 Bulls.
And to further rub salt in Shaq’s wounds, Chuck brought up the 6 series sweeps he experienced as a player, using it to mock the big fella. “Somebody over here got swept 7 times,” he said, while Shaq corrected his figures to 6. “6 times, oh that’s better. You couldn’t win one game?”
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Shaq, of course, hit back with a typical Shaq response: “And I still got 4 rings, and made the finals 6 times.” Hitting Barkley right where it hurts the most, his lack of championship rings. Of course, Chuck wasn’t going to sit idly and take it either. He attempted to clap back and say only 3 of Shaq’s rings counted, since Dwyane Wade won Finals MVP for his 4th.
And as Ernie pointed out in a small break in arguments, Shaq may have 6 sweeps to his name, but only 5 of them were in a best-of-7 series. His first sweep was a 3-0 defeat to the Pacers in the first round of the 1994 playoffs, when he was still a sophomore in Orlando.
His other sweeps were in ’95 (Rockets in the Finals), ’96 (Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals), ’98 (Jazz in the Western Conference Finals), ’99 (Spurs in the Western Conference 2nd round), and 2007, where the Bulls swept him in the first round.
While Shaquille O’Neal might have gotten swept six times, his four championship rings are what most people remember. On the other hand, Chuck was swept in the playoffs only once in his entire career. And while that is an impressive accomplishment, thanks to Shaq, all one remembers is no rings and that painful ’93 Finals loss to Michael Jordan.
