Shaquille O’Neal is once again guzzling on the Haterade.
The retired Basketball Hall of Famer O’Neal went viral for the wrong reasons this week due to his critical comments about the Detroit Pistons. During the latest episode of his self-titled podcast, O’Neal’s co-host Adam Lefkoe was giving credit to the Pistons for being an exciting team this season … only for O’Neal to shoot it down on the spot.
O’Neal initially said (mistakenly) that Detroit was four games under .500. When he was then fact-checked by Lefkoe and told that the Pistons were actually six games over .500 (a ten-game difference), O’Neal just went right back to hating.
“You wanna brag about a team that’s 32-26?” O’Neal said. “Bro, the Detroit Pistons ain’t winning no f–king championship. Stop it.”
You can watch the full clip, in which O’Neal also called the Pistons “boring,” here.
O’Neal, now 53, caught a lot of heat online for the comments and rightfully so as the Detroit Pistons have undeniably been one of the NBA’s very best stories this season. After finishing a league-worst 14-68 last year (which included an all-time record-setting losing streak), the Pistons are now 36-29 (after presumably being 32-26 at the time that O’Neal’s podcast was recorded). The remarkable turnaround has Detroit sitting at No. 6 in the East (just one game back of the No. 4 spot) despite having one of the youngest rosters in the league. Cade Cunningham, averaging 25.6 points and 9.2 assists per game this season, just made the All-Star team, and other Pistons in their early-20s like Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson have been very impressive as well.
But still, O’Neal refuses to give Detroit any credit, simply because they are not in the championship conversation this season. Unfortunately, this is just par for the course for O’Neal, who once even managed to hate on a player after he won the NBA MVP award. These kinds of comments are exactly what launched the recent discourse over the constant negative coverage of the NBA by its most prominent analysts.
