Shaquille O’Neal loves to show off his shooting skills on social media. Crowning himself the “Black Stephen Curry”, Shaq has been determined to prove since his retirement that his shooting isn’t as terrible as people make it out to be. A career 57.2% free-throw shooter, Shaq really does a good job at times to cleanse his reputation as a poor shooter. That’s exactly what he did recently in a fruit-chucking contest.
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The Big Fella keeps posting clips of him making deep threes and trick shots on his social media. Recently, Shaq posted a short video [on his YouTube channel] of him making some jumpers with fruits in what appears to be some kind of a carnival.
The Big Aristotle even called out his haters in the caption of the video, telling them to, “Keep talking about my free throws”.
In the video, Shaq seemed to be shooting his free throws into a fruit crate with what seemed like cantaloupes or some kind of a similar fruit. The Diesel even made all three of his shots.
But these kinds of shenanigans are a regular occurrence for O’Neal as just recently Shaq posted a video of himself making a hail marry half-court shot in his mansion’s home court. The impressive fact about the shot was that O’Neal was actually standing on an elevated surface outside the court, and still swished the shot in what appeared to be his first attempt.
While we know the TNT analyst is just doing these trick shots for giggles, it has actually raised questions as to Shaq’s potential as a player, if he could have made his shots from the foul line during his playing days.
Shaq believes free throws are his lessons in humility from God
The only thing Shaquille O’Neal couldn’t do on a basketball court was shoot free throws. While he did make more than half his free throws, O’Neal struggled compared to the rest of the league. For context, Shaq’s former running mate Kobe Bryant shot 83.7% for his career, a whopping 30% difference.
During a 2013 sit-down on ‘The Dan Patrick Show’, O’Neal was asked what his ceiling would be if he managed to make his free throws at a high clip. O’Neal replied by confessing that he actually practiced his free throws a lot, even making 85% of them in practice. But in games there was no use, O’Neal couldn’t put his free throws away consistently.
“It was something that didn’t really click over in the games. I said to myself that this is the man upstairs’ idea of humbling me. Imagine if I was the player that I was and shot free throws at 90%, I would be hard-pressed to deal with that.”
In the end, Shaquille O’Neal remained dominant even without shooting his free throws well enough. The Big Aristotle got to play 19 seasons in the league, a testament to Shaq’s physical dominance and longevity.
