The history of the NBA MVP award has been unfair to some of its greatest players. Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant are two of those unlucky players. While Shaq has lesser MVP trophies than some big men in the game like Moses Malone, Kobe has won the most valuable player award on fewer occasions than even Steve Nash. It’s the latter’s 2 MVP awards, that still bothers O’Neal, 12 years after he retired from the game. More often than not, he also brings Bryant to that conversation these days.
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Both Bryant and Shaq make it to most experts’ and fans’ top 10 basketball players of all-time list. And generally, none of the other players from that list have less than 2 MVPs. Which might be the reason why the 3x Finals MVP complains about it to this day.
Shaquille O’Neal brings up Steve Nash and the MVP snubs, AGAIN!
In the most recent edition of the Big Podcast with Shaq with Nischelle Turner, and Spice Adams, Shaquille O’Neal was discussing Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, and how fair are the MVP awards. Shaq brought up the subject of his MVPs and again went off on Nash for stealing one from him in 05’ and from Kobe Bryant in 06’.
“How many times was Steve Nash the MVP, was he the best player in the league?” asked O’Neal and both his crew members knew where it was going.
“Listen, there were a lot of people that were MVP over me, ain’t no way they were better than me. Some people got 3 MVPs and I got one and Kobe got one. So, but you’re saying they’re better than me and Kobe? I doubt it. Matter of fact, I know they [Steve Nash and others] ain’t [better than me and Kobe Bryant].”
This isn’t the first time he has said this since his snub in 2005, and it is surely not the last. Until the Big Aristotle has a platform to speak and an audience who listens to him, he will never let them hear the end of his MVP snubs.
O’Neal has even said it to Steve Nash on Live TV
Back in 2020, on a live TNT segment where Inside the NBA crew was interviewing the newly made Head Coach of the Brooklyn Nets, Steve Nash, Shaq asked the former point guard to show one of the MVP trophies he stole from him.
Nash took it sportingly and called O’Neal’s free-throw shooting ability out.
“It’s hard to give you an MVP since you couldn’t make a free throw down the stretch,” said Nash. Ouch. Perhaps that rebuttal is why Shaq found it even harder to digest.
