- Shaquille O’Neal faced harsh criticism from NBA analyst Bob Ryan
- Ryan shockingly believes that the Los Angeles Lakers legend is not a top 10 player in NBA history
- Shaq barely cracked Ryan’s top 20 players of all time
Shaquille O’Neal is one of the best players of all time. Shaq has a stacked resume and even forced the NBA to change some rules due to his dominance.
Despite being a four-time NBA champion and recipient of several phenomenal accolades, Shaquille O’Neal failed to crack the top 10 players of all time for Bob Ryan. Ryan shockingly claimed that the Diesel is barely a top 20 player in NBA history.
“Not for me,” Ryan said on the CLNS podcast. “He’s 15 to 20 if he’s lucky. I mean, he’s overrated. My, ‘Yeah, but!’ on Shaq is indifference to rebounding. He never led the league in rebounding. That’s just an amazing thing.”
(Starts at 0:15)
Now, that’s an interesting take on Shaquille O’Neal’s place in the list of top 20 players of all time. While Shaq never led the league in rebounding during the regular season, he was the No. 1 rebounder during the 2000 and 2001 playoffs.
O’Neal averaged 15.4 rebounds per game during each postseason run mentioned above. Even outside of rebounding, if we take a quick look at the careers of Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry, the former is better than the latter in almost every category.
So does that mean Stephen Curry is not a top 20 NBA player ever? It’d be a ridiculous argument, and so is leaving the Big Aristotle off the same list.
Shaquille O’Neal Dominated The NBA
Shaquille O’Neal averaged 23.7 points, 10.9 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 0.6 steals, and 2.3 blocks per game during his 19-year-long career in the NBA.
On top of that, he was a 4x NBA Champion, 3x Finals MVP, 1999-2000 MVP, 15x NBA All-Star, 14x All-NBA Team Selections, 3x All-Defensive Team Selections, 2x Scoring Champion, and 1992-1993 Rookie of the Year. O’Neal is, without a doubt, one of the top 10 players of all time.
Additionally, we believe Shaquille O’Neal is tier 3 in the all-time NBA GOAT pyramid. Once again, it makes O’Neal a generational talent and further bolsters his case for being the most dominant player of all time.
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