Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley Duke It Out Over Their Mavericks/Thunder Predictions

With a 22-point performance against the Spurs at home, Klay Thompson shined in his debut game for the Dallas Mavericks. The 34-year-old helped his team secure a 120-109 win to start the season at American Airlines Center. Taking this game as an indication of what the Mavs have in store for the rest of the season, Shaquille O’Neal boldly predicted that the Dallas side will win the Championship.

Shaq’s claim prompted immediate protests from TNT co-panelists Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith. However, Shaq didn’t pay heed to all the clamoring. He did provide a caveat to safeguard his prediction, Thompson will have to average 20 points.

The big fella even made his old friend, Ernie Johnson, write it down on a yellow post-it note (which Barkley hilariously called Cliffs’ Notes later on).

Shaq dictated, “If Klay Thompson can [average] 20 points a game, they will win a championship.” However, the show’s panel made Shaq take the “if” out of his statement moments later.

While Shaq showed complete faith in the Mavs, provided Thompson continues to play the same way, Barkley disagreed. He had a different take on how the Western Conference will look.

The Chuckster also made Johnson take out his ‘post-it notes’ to put down his predictions on the Oklahoma City Thunder in writing. And it was worth writing down, no doubt. Chuck confidently stated, “OKC is coming out of the West.”

Both teams have played just one game this season so far, so it’s difficult to say anything with certainty.

After a disappointing end to his stint with the Warriors, all eyes were on Thompson to see how he performs on his debut for the Mavericks. The four-time NBA Champion didn’t disappoint and put up seven rebounds and three steals to go with his scoring. He shot 7-13 from the field and 6-10 from the three-point range.

Shaq believes that Thompson is the third scorer that the Mavs needed along side Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving to get themselves over the hump. His performance was promising enough for the big fella to claim that the Mavs would end up as NBA champs this season.

And the Mavs displayed a lot of those traits. Klay has never looked more lethal shooting up open threes as the defenders flocked to Luka and Kyrie. But Barkley thought it was still too early to comment as the Mavs have only defeated a weak team like San Antonio.

Charles Barkley doesn’t have a lot of faith in Klay Thompson or the Mavericks

Thompson joining the Mavericks received mixed reactions. On one side there were people like Shaq who thought that he would provide the right balance to the team, on the other side, Chuck and like-minded people believed that he was not the player they were expecting him to be. Even before his debut game, Barkley talked about Father Time catching up to Thompson.

He said, “Everybody likes Klay Thompson, but no player gets better with age. Let’s stop that. And he got the two bad breaks with the ACL and the Achilles. That’s the reason Warriors wanted to move on. He’s not the same player. He’s had a great great career, he’s a great dude, but father time is undefeated.”

Last month when he appeared on The Bill Simmons Podcast, Barkley said something similar. Without providing any further context, he said, “The Mavs, I think, are gonna regress.” Whether he will eat his words in the next few months or not, we’ll know in due time. For now, the Mavericks are off to a flying start.