There are arguably no players more confident in NBA history than Shaquille O’Neal and Magic Johnson were. Both as different as can be, they dominated in their ways and they knew exactly just how great they were too. Magic had come into the league as a bit of a unicorn, a big guard that could do everything on the floor. And Shaq himself was as unique as they come, no one has been able to mix size, strength, and skill quite in the same way he did in the league’s history.
Both have something else in common too, they’re both Los Angeles Lakers legends. Magic was the main man during the Showtime era, dazzling everyone with his passing and scoring, and winning 5 championships. Shaq enjoyed arguably the most dominant run of any individual player to start the new millennium, winning a threepeat and three Finals MVPs in a row.
One would think that since the Lakers moved from Magic to Shaq in the 90s, the latter would have mentored the former. But the Big Diesel joined Los Angeles after already going to the NBA Finals with Orlando, an established superstar in the league. And this led to a bit of an interesting dynamic with the retired Johnson, as O’Neal himself once spoke about.
Shaquille O’Neal Revealed He Wasn’t Too Receptive To Magic Johnson’s Advice In His Early Lakers Days
Shaq signed a monster deal with the Lakers to move there in 1996, so obviously, he was at the top of the world when he made the move. With Kobe Bryant coming in, it seemed like a matter of time till LA got back to the promised land, and the big man probably knew it. So it’s no surprise that he revealed in an interview with the Pivot Podcast this year that he didn’t listen to Magic once in his early stint with the team (via Essentially Sports).
“Okay Magic, I know you took care of me when I first got to LA, but LA my sh*t now….. it’s my league now.”
And to be fair to Shaq, even though he did struggle early in his Lakers days, he lived up to it as well. The Lakers won a three-peat with O’Neal as their best player alongside an incredible Kobe Bryant, something even Magic never achieved. He should have followed Magic’s lead sometimes though, especially in business, as it came back to mess with him hilariously later in life.
