Shaquille O’Neal may be the most dominant big man in NBA history but he had his fair share of help back in the day. In a recent segment on the BIG podcast, O’Neal looked back through his career and separated each of his top co-stars by their defining characteristics.
Leonard Founette: “Out of all the guys you played with on your team, who was the best?”
Shaquille O’Neal: “Kobe was the meanest. The best for me to play with was Penny Hardaway, cause Penny Hardaway was super unselfish. He gave me the ball every time…”
“Kobe, we came in at the same time and he was a youngster, reminded me of you a little bit. Like he just wanted to be great from 17, 18 years old,” said O’Neal. “And he was the guy you could talk smack to and he wouldn’t pout. He would try to shut you up. So, I used to go in and be like ‘You ain’t that good’ and I used to piss him off so bad he used to try and outdo me. If he’s averaging 30 and I’m averaging 30, that’s 60 points right there. We were guaranteed to win, he was the meanest.”
“D-Wade was a mixture of both of them. Wade was the one who after all the troubles I had with Kobe I couldn’t really come at him like that. And you know, the new generation, the younger guys. So I told him ‘You’re the mean and I’m just gonna be your hitter.'”
It all started with Penny Hardaway in 1992. After getting drafted by the Orlando Magic, O’Neal was eventually joined by Penny Hardaway, one of the best young guards in the league at the time. Hardaway easily accepted a sidekick role next to O’Neal and, together, they led the Magic to the NBA Finals in 1995.
It was a major shift to go from Penny to Kobe, who was younger but even more confident in his game. Kobe’s tenacious hunger and drive to win pushed Shaq to his best and they achieved great success together as 3x champions by 2002.
Sadly, it was that same competitive spirit that pushed Shaq away in 2004 and led to his trade to the Miami Heat. Kobe and Shaq were arguing every day toward the end, and the Lakers were given an ultimatum to choose one or the other.
The Lakers stuck with Kobe, and Shaq had to move on to find his next partner: Dwyane Wade. At this point, O’Neal was already past his prime and he was willing to accept a different role than he did with Kobe in order to make it work.
With Wade, O’Neal conceded control and he toned down his attitude toward the Miami Heat legend. After watching things go wrong with Kobe, the Diesel wanted to play it safe in South Beach and his decision paid off in the summer of 2006 when he won his fourth and final championship.
Looking back, Shaq had plenty of ups and downs across each of his major NBA stops and each was a drastically different point of his career. With Hardaway, O’Neal was still young and fresh and while they never won a title together their brief stint as teammates stands as the most successful stretch in Orlando Magic history.
With Wade, O’Neal was toward the end of his prime and he was happy to take on a secondary role for the sake of making one last title run. He was the man in charge and Shaq brilliantly adapted his game to fit under Wade’s wing.
Of course, all of it pales in comparison to his achievements with Kobe. Their time together is often dubbed as the greatest tandem in NBA history and their Lakers team stands as the last to win three consecutive NBA championships. So no matter how Shaq might remember his old teammates today, it’s Kobe who will always be his top guy and it’ll always be Kobe’s name in the history books as the one who pushed Shaq to reach the peak of his potential.
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