Shaq gets into Instagram spat with Kevin Durant

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.