15x NBA All-Star Shaquille O’Neal has always had a unique approach when it comes to dominating the sport that he loves. For Shaq, it wasn’t about building up the accolades or about being defined as ‘great.’ He wanted more than that.
On the latest episode of his docuseries, O’Neal dropped a pretty big truth bomb on his place in basketball history and revealed why he didn’t stop at just being ‘the best.’
“When you talk about the best in basketball, there’s 50 names you could say. Really, 50 names you could say. Form your father’s era to your grandfather’s era to my era to my kids’ era, but when you talk about the most dominant, it’s only two in all these eras… Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neal. That’s what people don’t understand about me. I don’t want to be the best. Forget all that best. I want you to fear me I want you to be scared. I want you to be so scared, other 28 teams, that you go to the commissioner and you get the rules changed.”
A dominant force. #ShaqHBO is streaming now on @HBOMax. pic.twitter.com/HeCh5flVmC
— HBO Documentaries (@HBODocs) December 8, 2022
NBA Changed Forever As The Result Of O’Neal’s Dominance
During his prime, Shaq was so unstoppable for the Lakers that teams had to resort to using the infamous ‘Hack-a-Shaq’ method just to slow him down. As a career 52% free throw shooting, the strategy was often very effective until O’Neal confronted the NBA Commissioner to try and get the teams to stop.
O’Neal’s career also inspired stronger goals and zone defense, which wasn’t typically played back then.
For a player like Shaq, being consistently sent to the free throw line would presumably have been frustrating. But O’Neal spoke about the Hack-A-Shaq strategy in the past, and actually was quite positive about it. Shaq noted that the Hack-A-Shaq strategy was just a way of telling him that he was too difficult to contain.
“The Hack-A-Shaq is just a way of telling me that you can’t stop me. Thank you. I appreciate it.”
For Shaq, he’s the type of player whose ambitions exceeded the wildest of dreams of average players. Instead of aiming to be a good or great individual basketball star, Shaq wanted to strike fear in his opponents and dominate the game every second he was on the floor.
That mentality is what led to one of the most impressive careers any athlete has ever put together.
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