“Wilt Chamberlain Was Brutal To Me”: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Enlightened An Emotional Shaquille O’Neal On Sensitivity Towards Criticism

There’s a very thin line between criticism and hating, and most of today’s NBA media shows play jump rope with it. One man who stays on the criticism side of the line, however (or so he claims), is Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq has gone on record multiple times as the self-proclaimed ‘leader’ of the ‘big-man alliance’ and has made life pretty difficult for centers and big men who don’t meet his criteria of what a dominant player should look like.

A lot of fans have called him out for seemingly taking things too far at times, but Shaq insists it’s all in the spirit of the game—and that it’s his way of passing on knowledge to the younger players in today’s NBA. He even mentioned going through the same cycle of criticism during his playing days, pointing out that it came from none other than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

While speaking to Ashley Nevel, Shaq revealed that Kareem once questioned the media, asking—if Shaq was really the “most dominant” big man ever, then why hadn’t he won a title?

Shaq’s early Orlando Magic teams, though talented, were still young and never managed to secure the ultimate prize. But displaying the kind of mentality he now expects from today’s stars, Shaq told Nevel, “Instead of whining and crying, I said, ‘Okay, watch this, Mr. Abdul-Jabbar,’ and I won three in a row.”

He also dropped another juicy tidbit for Nevel and her listeners—after retiring, he asked Kareem why he had been so hard on him. Kareem simply said he wanted the best for Shaq, and that Wilt Chamberlain had done something similar with him.

“And he said Wilt did the same to him. Something I never knew. I thought he and Wilt were friends, and he’s like ‘Wilt was brutal to me,'” Shaq recalled.

The former MVP also learned something that hit him emotionally—Wilt had told Kareem that he’d been closely following Shaq’s game since his days at LSU. In Shaq’s own words, “I almost cried.” But while Shaq and Kareem have managed to maintain an amicable relationship despite the criticism, Wilt and Kareem’s relationship gradually deteriorated over time.

Kareem once called Wilt a “crybaby and a quitter” in a letter

It was no secret that Kareem once adored Wilt. He’s spoken openly about his admiration for the late legend and even called him his hero when they first met. Unfortunately, that admiration eventually gave way to a mutual sense of enmity—fueled in part by Chamberlain’s claim that Kareem should’ve retired five years earlier than he did.

After his retirement in 1989, he wrote an open letter to Wilt, claiming that a lot of his criticisms of his career came from the fact that he managed to do more than he did. He called Wilt a quitter and a crybaby because he would simply blame his teammates and the referees after a loss.

“After any tough test in which you didn’t do well, you blamed those around you and quit,” he wrote. “Given your jealousy, I can understand that. So, now that I have left, one thing will be part of my legacy: People will remember that I worked with my teammates and helped us win.

“You will be remembered as a whining crybaby and a quitter, stats and all.”

While the two never publicly resolved their differences, Kareem did issue a statement after Chamberlain’s passing in 1999: “Wilt was one of the greatest ever, and we will never see another one like him.”