It turns out Shaquille O’Neal was just trying to motivate JaVale McGee by mocking the Golden State Warriors center on the air during a “Shaqtin’ A Fool” segment last week. At least, that’s what the Basketball Hall of Famer and TNT analyst is implying based on something that happened to him during his playing days.
O’Neal has criticized big men before, most notably Dwight Howard during a 2009 interview with Sporting News in which he downplayed Howard’s accomplishments with the Orlando Magic, the same team O’Neal played for to start his career. “Everything Dwight Howard is doing, I already did before him,” O’Neal said.
O’Neal explained that he was just trying to motivate Howard.
“I didn’t poke fun at (Howard),” O’Neal said, per Sean Deveney of Sporting News. “I was just trying to ruffle his feathers. Get him upset. I did that because it was what was done to me.”
O’Neal recalled the time legendary center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar refused to make eye contact with him during a game in 2000 in which O’Neal scored 61 points against the Los Angeles Clippers, the team Abdul-Jabbar was working for at the time.
“Every time we came down he would go like that,” O’Neal said, moving his head downward. “When I was averaging all those points in LA, they were saying, ‘Hey Kareem, Shaq is boom-boom-boom.’ Kareem said, ‘He hasn’t won a championship yet, he’s not that good.’ Did I cry about it? No.
“I just figure if it worked for me, it would work for other people. It’s just my way of testing people out. A lot of people know and understand, I don’t waste time taking personal shots. There is a motive to everything I do and everything I say. I am giving guys the blueprint of what it takes to be the next dominant big man, and they can either take the information or not. If they don’t want to take the information, it’s not on me.
“At the end of the day, if they don’t get one of these, it’s not my problem,” O’Neal said, holding up a championship ring. “It may seem like I am poking fun at these guys, but if you really look into the message, if you decrypt what I am saying, I am just giving them the answers to the test.”
It looks like McGee won’t be getting the “answers to the test” any longer. O’Neal has said he won’t mention McGee again during “Shaqtin’ A Fool” segments.
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