Shaquille O’Neal made an Instagram post claiming that a 2000s team with Kobe Bryant, himself, Tim Duncan, Steve Nash and young LeBron James would sweep a team of the 2010s comprising Stephen Curry, prime LeBron, Harden, Kawhi and Durant.
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Athletes backing the playing style of their own eras is nothing to write home about. They need to take immeasurable pride and have unreal self-belief in order to win at a high level.
With that being said, Shaquille O’Neal strikes as a particularly insecure fellow among NBA greats. He’s the only top-10 player ever to have a podcast and a TV show to broadcast his thoughts on the game.
Given his popularity and reach on social media, O’Neal has a bigger voice than legends from his era. He often uses this to put forth certain interesting thought experiments on his socials.
Shaquille O’Neal asks who’d guard him from a 2010s team with Stephen Curry, LeBron James
A post comparing the 5 best players of the 2000s with the 5 best players of the 2010s recently came across Shaq’s eyes. He definitely had something to say about the comparison in question, judging from his latest Instagram post.
O’Neal captioned his post thus:
“They wouldn’t even win a game. And i have a question who’s guarding me?”
O’Neal’s question makes a lot of sense. The tallest player on the 2010s team is Kevin Durant, who’s over 120 lbs lighter than Shaq was in 2000. The next tallest player is LeBron James, who gives up 4-5 inches to Shaq despite weighing 260 pounds.
O’Neal is far from the only outmatched player here. Tim Duncan was a solid 6’11” as well, with a remarkable post game and GOAT-caliber defensive impact. Both of them would definitely cause a lot of interior trouble while patrolling their paint well.
However, Shaq’s team does suffer from an acute lack of shooting. The young version of LeBron James was quite hit-and-miss from range, and Kobe Bryant was an inconsistent long-range shooter. Steve Nash averaged 42% from 3 for his career, but on middling volume.
Stephen Curry and James Harden, in addition to Kawhi and Kevin Durant, can provide amazing spacing with their elite shooting to their own teams. So it’s likely that they could cause a couple of roadblocks, instead of getting swept.
How has basketball evolved since Shaq’s era?
O’Neal debuted in 1992 and played in an era without legal zone defense for 9 seasons. He then adapted to the implementation of zones and the defensive 3-second rule, preventing him from staying in the lane for extended periods.
Since then, hand-checking has been made illegal (2004), leading to one progression of the game. Teams slowly moved away from post-ups and isolation mid-range looks to pick-and-roll basketball.
After that, teams began focusing on 3-pointers more, leading to more open shots. Thus, the game has evolved at least 3 separate times in the 20+ years since O’Neal’s peak.
