Before reconciling their relationship after retirement, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant had one of the toughest feuds ongoing during their playing careers. The once-Lakers superstars who won a three-peat together had a great animosity for each other due to their conflicting egos. While Kobe Bryant dealt with his sexual assault case at the courts, Shaq took that opportunity to take a dig at Bryant and say he was not the one ‘buying love’ like Kobe. To this, Bryant hit back with a wild claim, saying that Shaq had paid up to $1 million in hush money to various women, which Shaq later dismissed as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘false.’
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Six months after this comment, Bryant perhaps realized his mistakes and sought to apologize to his former teammate for his controversial words. In a 2004 interview with Stephen A. Smith, Bryant seemed to be going away from his comments, saying he would not like to get involved in Shaq’s matter.
However, Bryant did confirm that he had tried to reach out to Shaq via a mutual friend but didn’t have Shaq’s number to reach out to him. The Mamba later added that Christmas Day sounded like a good day for him to reach out to his teammate of eight years and extend his apology. Speaking to the panelists in the interview, Shaq said
“I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to him, but if I do get the opportunity I would definitely…I can try to talk him down but I don’t have his number or anything like that. I was able to get a message to him through a mutual friend but December 25th sounds like a good day to me to talk to him and tell him I never meant any kind of way to bring his personal business to the light like that.”
When SAS asked Bryant if he feared Shaq never talking to him, he told the panelists that he was doing what he felt was right. “After all, it’s right to go up and apologize to the man for bringing him into my situation. Things were way overblown in this state,” added the 5x champion, who also admitted that it was perhaps wrong of him to put Shaq in this situation.
While conversing with Stephen A. Smith, Bryant understood that the analyst had much better contact and relation with Shaq. Bryant jokingly tried seeking Shaq’s number from SAS and further sought Smith’s help in closing this matter.
The beef between Shaq and Kobe continued for a long time until the duo decided to squash this feud in 2015. When Kobe Bryant passed away from an unfortunate helicopter crash in 2020, Shaq was one of the first NBA personalities to react to the incident. The Big Aristotle claimed that despite their bumps, he was deeply grieved in losing a teammate and a younger brother, with whom he had won three consecutive championships as Lakers.
Shaq and Kobe squashed their beef in 2015
Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant realized the media overblew their beef and publicly squashed their feud in 2015. The Mamba joined the Big Aristotle on The Big Podcast, where the duo couldn’t stop talking about their playing days, and all the good times they saw together.
Shaq and Kobe confirmed on screen that they don’t hate each other. Being a young athlete at that time, Shaq agreed that both his and Kobe’s disagreements and arguments further fueled them to play at their maximum potential on the biggest stage. Speaking his heart out to the 5x champion, Shaq said,
” I just want people to know that I don’t hate. I know you don’t hate me. I called it today a “work beef” is what we had. I was young. You were young. But as I look at it, we won three out of four (championships), so I don’t really think a lot was done wrong. I just want to clear the air and let everyone know that: No, I don’t hate you. We had a lot of disagreements. We had a lot of arguments. But I think it fueled us.”
Kobe Bryant seemed to agree that he and Shaq had immense fun in their heydays. Furthermore, the Mamba added that their facing their disagreement and discontentment against each other was better than whispers that could create factions within the team. If only this understanding between them had come during their time with the Lakers, who knows how many more championships they could have won.
