Shaquille O’Neal and Yao Ming had numerous duels with one another during their time in the NBA. Over the years, the rivalry turned into a beautiful friendship after both legends retired. However, Shaq, at regular intervals, likes to remind the world that he was an unstoppable force during his NBA career, even against Ming. Recently, he did so by reposting a clip of him dominating Ming with some thunderous dunks.
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The four-time NBA Champion shared an old clip on his Instagram stories, where he can be seen representing the Lakers against Ming’s Houston Rockets. The Diesel had 10 dunks in the game against his fellow Hall of Famer.
Although Shaq himself stands at 7’1, dunking over a 7’6 center like Ming isn’t an easy task.
Shaq dominated the game against the Houston Rockets by putting up 39 points. Interestingly, the 39-point game that happened in March of 2003 was also the biggest game he had against the Rockets veteran.
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During their time in the league, Shaq and Ming faced one another a total of 18 times, five of the games were played in the playoffs. According to Stat Muse, Shaq averaged 22.9 points, 9.6 rebounds, and 2.5 blocks in 13 games against the Chinese in the regular season, while shooting 55.4% from the field.
Shaq won 10 of the 18 total games he played against Ming, taking the upper hand over the 7’6 giant. In terms of performance, Ming wasn’t too far behind the Lakers legend. He averaged 18.6 points and 10.5 rebounds in his career against Shaq. As arguably the last two pure centers of the league, they were arch-rivals. But with time, they have become good friends.
Yao Ming tricked Shaquille O’Neal
After being rivals for so many years, both Shaq and Ming made their way together into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016. During his speech, the Lakers legend detailed how he was tricked by Ming into believing that he didn’t understand English. As it wasn’t his first language, Shaq believed him, only to be shocked later.
He said, “He tricked me. Three years, I never spoke to Yao. I thought there was a language barrier there and then one game, he hit me with the Hakeem Olajuwon fadeaway. I said, ‘Hey Yao, nice move,’ and he said, ‘Thanks my brother’. I said, ‘Whoa whoa…you speak English?’ He’s like, ‘Shaq, you never talked to me, of course, I speak English.'”
It was great that he realized that Ming could speak very well because it helped them communicate better and form a friendship that’s still going strong.
