Shaquille O’Neal made no bones about it during an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” Monday night: LeBron James and Anthony Davis would have no chance of winning a hypothetical showdown with a Shaq-Kobe pairing.
Asked by Fallon about such a 2-on-2 matchup — one that obviously could never occur with any semblance of fairness given the ages of O’Neal and Bryant — Shaq laid it all on the line.
“Yes. Hell yes. Of course [we’d win],” O’Neal said. “Cause there’s only one contributing factor. Who’s gonna guard me?”
O’Neal certainly makes an interesting point. Neither James nor Davis would have been able to handle him in the paint when he was in his prime. Actually, there were few players during Shaq’s heyday that could prevent him from being an unstoppable force down low.
That’s not to say that the LeBron-AD pairing is not a formidable one. After all, the dynamic duo have paced the Lakers to a Western Conference-best 29-7 record in their first season as teammates.
All that said, the routine debates that involve pitting players from different eras against one another is always an amusing, albeit arguably meaningless, exercise. That said, such hypothetical endeavors will undoubtedly continue due to their novelty, not to mention the inability to declare a winner in any real-world scenario.
Still, it’s hardly surprising Shaq Diesel believes that he and the Black Mamba would come out on top in a matchup with King James and AD. What else was he supposed to say?
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