As he’s demonstrated in past years, Shaq is not a fan of comparisons when he’s part of those and he confirmed that in recent hours after Charles Barkley compared one of the best duos in the NBA right now to the one he created with Kobe Bryant on the Los Angeles Lakers.
They were the last team in the NBA to three-peat and of course, they have big clout but Shaq gets a little too sensitive when somebody sees the tiniest similarity between modern-day NBA stars and him or his partnership with Kobe Bryant. He stated that he would take a different approach when talking about young players and he put that in practice last night.
When Charles Barkley said that Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons were ‘Shaq-and-Kobe-Like’, the big man didn’t even reply and had an epic reaction, just sipping his drink, acting like he wasn’t listening to anything that Chuck said.
Shaq just sipping his drink when Barkley said Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons are “Shaq and Kobe like.” 😂
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) February 26, 2021
Even though Barkley explained that he said what he said because he sees that JoJo and Simmons can be a problem every single night, Shaq wasn’t having any of that and kept taking his drink until the subject changed.
At least he didn’t throw any shade to anybody this time, contrary to what he used to do when somebody dared to compare him to a current star. O’Neal has been involved in controversies recently and perhaps this is the start of a new era in his career as an analyst. Still, it wasn’t so hard to realize that he didn’t like what his co-host was saying.
