In 2017, Michael Irving shook the NBA world as he discussed conspiracy theories — or as he put it, “not even a conspiracy theory” — about the Earth being flat. “The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. … It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you, it’s right in front of our faces. They lie to us,” Irving had famously said on the Road Trippin’ with RJ & Channing podcast.
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Things got even more interesting when legend Shaquille O’Neal also decided to join Irving and dip his toes into the conspiratorial world of flat-earthers.
“I drive from coast to coast, and this s**t is flat to me,” he had said on “The Big Podcast With Shaq.” If that wasn’t enough, he had some choice observations to make. The great scientific mind of O’Neal wasn’t just going to stop at rehashing the same things most flat-earthers say. No, he had to put some weight behind his argument.
“I’m just saying, I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat to me. I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity. Have you looked outside Atlanta lately and seen all these buildings? You mean to tell me that China is under us? China is under us? It’s not. The world is flat.”
Turns out, O’Neal’s comments didn’t go into the ether, and he had to face some serious consequences. One of them was getting a call from HR.
“When I said it and it went viral, they actually called me in, and I had to talk to the HR department.They were talking about dropping me, and I said, ‘You can drop me all you want, you’re still going to have to pay me,'” he revealed to David Spade on the Big Podcast.
Shaq has previously revealed that he lost a “f**king big deal on that,” “cause [of] the haters.” The admission came on another episode of his podcast with son Myles.
While he didn’t mention the name of the company, he revealed that the company was bombarded with over 500,000 complaints, which ultimately led them to renege on the partnership. Exactly how much did he lose then?
“Big deal, like $20 million,” he claimed. So, it seems he didn’t get paid after all. When you’re as big a personality as Shaq, it seems you can even lose money just by saying the wrong thing.
Both Irving and Shaq later went back on their words, and as Irving went on to apologise to educators for misleading impressionable students, Shaq simply said, “The first part of the theory is I’m joking, you idiots.”
