“I Wasn’t Trying to Hit Him”: Shaquille O’Neal Shares Nasty Karl Malone Moment, and Blatant Lie Right After

Shaquille O’Neal is from a tougher era in the NBA’s history, plain and simple. During his hay day, officiating was done with a blindfold on, a foul wasn’t called unless blood was drawn, and people would routinely play overly defense, along with getting into consistent fistfights with each other. Really, fans didn’t know if they were watching basketball or the WWE.

Of course, this was an absolutely boneheaded time in the NBA’s long history, from a safety perspective. However, as if it’s the only right way to play basketball, Shaquille O’Neal has proclaimed to be beyond proud of his era. In fact, the man recently even shared a nasty moment between David Robinson and Karl Malone from back in the day to prove it.

Shaquille O’Neal shares the scary moment between Karl Malone and David Robinson

When it comes to big men from the era we’re talking about here, not many came better than either David Robinson or Karl Malone. And of course, back then it was brute force over all else. So of course, this was always going to be a battle of strength.

However, things went beyond too far just 3 minutes into this game, with the playoffs right around the corner. Frankly, it’d probably be fair to say that Malone nearly took his opponent’s head off. Take a look at the Instagram post, and then Shaquille O’Neal’s story below.

Suffice it to say, that blow to the head doesn’t look like the best thing in the world. Worse, it looks like Karl Malone was looking to do it deliberately, making this downright potential assault.

There is a lot to unpack here. So, with all this baggage, what happened next? What did each player say on the matter after everything was said and done?

David Robinson and Karl Malone simply went about their business as usual

Of course, after a blow like that, David Robinson was left unconscious for a couple of minutes, before he left the game due to a concussion he suffered. However, after the game ended, while everybody else expected some serious heat to be exchanged, here is all the Spurs man said.

“I accepted his apology. That was pretty much it… I’ve known him for a while. That’s the way he plays on the court. I don’t really think he was trying to hurt me, but I don’t know.”

On the other end, here is what Karl Malone had to say.

“I wasn’t trying to hit him, of course. David’s a great friend of mine. That’s just a play we run, where I turn to the basket like that.”

Frankly, we don’t know where to start on this whole thing. And frankly, we don’t think we will either. We’ll just say that this era was something else.