Shaquille O’Neal has spent years criticizing what he calls the NBA’s ‘soft’ style of play, but in a recent appearance on the Hoop Genius Podcast, he did something unexpected. He blamed himself for it.
“I think it’s my fault that the game is being played the way it’s played now, because when I was dominating the post, they tried to bring in centers to bring me out from the post. ‘Okay, he’s good offensively. Now, let’s make him play defense and let’s pick and pop.’ And then we’re all products of our generation.”
“So, I grew up watching guys that dominated the post. But you look at Nikola Jokic, he watched Dirk Nowitzki and Dirk watched Kevin Garnett and they all watched Tim Duncan; a 6-11, 7-foot player that could pop out and shoot the jumper. So it’s my fault that guys are playing soft, that’s what I call it.”
“The key to dominating the post is just making your opponent quit, bringing the force like I used to, try to elbow you in your face on purpose to see if you can handle it. So now that I know I got you going like that I got the advantage.”
This is where the lineage Shaq referenced matters. Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Dirk Nowitzki were not running from physicality, but they expanded the definition of what a big man could be. They punished teams from 15 to 20 feet instead of strictly on the block. That midrange comfort later stretched outward, and once the math caught up, the three-point shot became the logical next step.
Shaq was the pressure point. Those players were the bridge.
Then came the accelerator. Stephen Curry did not just popularize the three-point shot. He weaponized it. What started as big men stepping out to survive Shaq eventually became everyone stepping out to keep up with spacing and efficiency. Once the formula worked, there was no going back. The old-school center, whose job was to battle in the paint for 35 minutes, quietly disappeared.
Today’s elite bigs dominate in completely different ways. Nikola Jokic controls games with angles, touch, and vision rather than force. Joel Embiid mixes power with finesse. Giannis Antetokounmpo blends downhill force with modern spacing concepts. None of them play like Shaq did, because the league no longer allows that ecosystem to exist consistently.
Shaq’s definition of post dominance was psychological as much as physical. He talked about trying to elbow opponents on purpose, not to injure them, but to test whether they wanted the fight. Once he sensed hesitation, the advantage was his. That kind of intimidation is almost impossible to sustain in today’s spacing-driven NBA.
Stephen Curry lit the match. Shaquille O’Neal stacked the fuel long before that. The modern NBA is not soft because players lack toughness. It is different because one man made brute force unsustainable. And in doing so, he changed basketball forever.
