There wasn’t a single player that was able to stop Shaquille O’Neal in his prime. Many players from that era continue to tell the tale that was ‘The Big Diesel’. Clippers head coach, Tyronn Lue, believes that people don’t give the Lakers legend enough credit for how dominant he was. As a result, he brought up the late-great, Dikembe Mutombo, as an ‘unfortunate’ example to prove O’Neal’s greatness.
Advertisement
Lue made a guest appearance on The Draymond Green Show with Baron Davis. During his conversation with the Warriors star, Lue went into detail regarding O’Neal’s otherworldly dominance. Lue played with the Lakers for the first three seasons of his career and witnessed Shaq’s force firsthand. In the 2001 NBA Finals, Shaq matched up against one of the best defensive players ever in Mutombo. However, Lue highlights that even he never stood a chance against Shaq. He said,
“You can’t stop him, you can’t guard him. God rest in peace, one of my guys, Dikembe Mutombo, defensive player of the year, Shaq averaged 36 and 14 that series. Just was no answer for Shaq.”
In that 2001 Finals series, O’Neal averaged 33.0 points and 15.8 rebounds per game on 57.3 % shooting from the field. On the other hand, Mutombo averaged 41.6 minutes per game in that series, while having the assignment of guarding Shaq. Mutombo wasn’t his prime version during this series but he was still one of the best defenders in the league.
Similar to O’Neal, Lakers star Kobe Bryant was a problem for opposing defenses. However, teams could double-team him to force the ball out of his hands. That didn’t apply to O’Neal since he was significantly stronger than his opponents. As a result, he could plow through multiple defenders for scoring opportunities.
Teams had to orchestrate their rosters just to factor in the occasions when they did face off against the four-time NBA champion.
Shaq forced teams into foul trouble
The hack-a-Shaq became a popularized method later in O’Neal’s career. However, that strategy was ineffective during Shaq’s prime. Lue highlighted the schematical dilemma fouling the 15-time All-Star could cause for opposing teams.
“You could foul him but now you got three centers playing the game,” Lue said. “So now your third and fourth string centers are playing against Shaq because everybody else fouled out or is in foul trouble. Now you’re in the bonus with six minutes to go in every quarter.”
Shaq himself felt repeatedly disrespected by teams choosing not to double-team him. Upon hearing from Uncle Jerome that Mutombo was planning on playing him man-to-man, the Lakers legend felt disrespected. On the Big Podcast earlier this year, he would admit he went at Dikembe for this very reason.
“Don’t disrespect me by saying you gonna play me one-on-one. I take that as a sign of disrespect. So I’m looking at the paper, ‘I’m Defensive Player of the Year, I can play Shaq one-on-one.’ It’s a sign of disrespect.”
Teams had to pick their poison and that doesn’t account for the attempt to slow down Bryant, Shaq’s running-mate. There is a reason why the Lakers were impenetrable in the early 2000s and O’Neal is the culprit behind that.
