Now that Shaquille O’Neal no longer has Charles Barkley to spar with until next season, he is going after a slightly smaller target.
The retired center great O’Neal made some comments on a podcast this week comparing his three-peat era Los Angeles Lakers to the Steph Curry-led Golden State Warriors. O’Neal said that he would have laid Curry out in a hypothetical matchup between the two teams.
Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant, who was part of those Warriors teams with Curry, responded to O’Neal’s remarks in an Instagram comment.
“Bring Shaq up in that pick and roll and test them hips,” said the former NBA MVP Durant. “Pause.”
O’Neal then fired back at Durant’s comment. He said he would just post up Durant and the Warriors every time they missed and score on them. O’Neal added that he didn’t have to stop anyone, instead he had to be stopped.
Both men bring up good points here. The game is now fully stretched out to the 3-point line, meaning that bigs have much more ground to cover in the pick-and-roll to avoid being defensive liabilities. But O’Neal was actually agile and in pretty good shape at that time, at least during those first couple of years under Phil Jackson. He also scored at a dominant 58% clip for his career. By expected points per possession (1.16), an O’Neal inside shot would have been more efficient than a 3-point attempt by the 38% career long-range shooter Durant (1.14). Still, it would not have been quite nearly as efficient as a triple try by Curry (43 percent from distance for his career for an expected points per possession of 1.29).
Stats and hypotheticals aside, there are probably some personal undertones to this discussion as well. Just a few weeks ago, O’Neal took a seemingly unprompted shot at Durant on social media.
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