Getting older is hard, especially if you were a professional athlete. What once came naturally eventually becomes a chore. Your mind tells you to move fast, but your body just cannot keep up. We are seeing it now with LeBron James, and we saw it in the past with legends like Shaquille O’Neal. Dominance in any sport is one thing, but in the end, we all lose to Father Time.
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Shaq’s case was more apparent. In 2011, he was on the Celtics, his final team, but looked like a shell of his former self. There is now a famous meme where, whenever someone has a subpar game, a photo of the Diesel in a Celtics uniform gets brought up. The four-time NBA champion was once the most dominant big man basketball had ever seen. Now, at 53, Shaq is out here losing to kids.
That is what Shaq admitted during the latest edition of The Big Podcast. O’Neal’s guest was NFL icon Tom Brady, who claimed that if he needed to play a football game tomorrow, he would be ready. Shaq then revealed that not only would he be unable to play a professional basketball game, but that his body had simply stopped working.
“Confession time. I got smoked by two German kids in the Bahamas playing basketball,” began Shaq, which made TB12 and co-host Adam Lefkoe chuckle. “How old were they?” asked Brady.
“12,” responded the Diesel.
“They were there on the court by themselves. It wasn’t like a big fan thing. One of the kids start talking, but I couldn’t move left or right. My shot was flat. I was like, ‘Who was I? Where did it go?'”
Shaq had a smile on his face, but there was a hint of sadness to his voice. Perhaps getting older is hitting the Shaq Fu Master a little harder than he wants to admits. But at least, he can relish in the fact that he’s still as famous as ever.
To ease the moment, Brady recalled seeing a video of Michael Jordan shooting a basketball for the first time in years. “I saw the video of MJ when he went up to New York and he rented that house. He was like, ‘Let me see if I can make a free throw.’ And then he made it and he said, ‘Man I haven’t shot a ball in a long time.’ So that was like, I just wanna see him do it,” stated Brady.
This got the boys speaking about Brady and how he still performed well in his final NFL game (over 350 passing yards). Lefkoe wondered when he considered finally hanging them up after 7 Super Bowl wins. “I think if I looked at myself and I can’t do what I used to do then I would just say enough is enough.”
For Shaq, that moment clearly came years ago, even if the acceptance is still settling in. The rings, the records, and the fear he put into defenses every night can never be taken away, no matter how flat the jumper or how slow the feet look now.
Father Time does not negotiate, even with the most dominant forces the game has ever seen, and eventually everyone has to listen when their body says it is done. Brady might feel like he can still go, but even TB12 knows that his run is over.
