Shaquille O'Neal's break from going at current NBA players proved to be short lived on Friday, March 10, when the release of an interview he recently did with Sports Illustrated featured him putting Kevin Durant in his place again.
“KD doesn’t have G–14 Classification. He can’t talk to me like that. He may think he does, and he’s sticking up for his teammate. He’s a great player, but you ain’t in the club yet," said Shaq, referring to Durant's failure to have taken his team all the way to an NBA Finals victory thus far in his ten-year career. He then reminded the Golden State Warriors star of the company he remains in, among basketball greats who had illustrious careers but never took home a title. "You’re on the outside in line with [Charles] Barkley, [Karl] Malone and [John] Stockton. You’re not in the club with me and those [championship] guys. That’s why I tweeted him, ‘Mind ya business'.”
Shaq's rift with Durant stems from him telling KD to worry about himself and stay out of the beef after Durant came to the defense of teammate JaVale McGee, who got under O'Neal's skin when he told him to keep his nuts out of his mouth. McGee's comment prompted the all-time basketball great - turned - basketball commentator to threaten to slap him. Durant would then go public with a couple of snarky words for the big man, stating during a post work out interview that he didn't "know cops could threaten civilians."
O'Neal would continue to dig at Durant in SI, saying that he comes from a generation of sensitive players playing in a "soft" league. He followed by illustrating what it was like coming up back in a time when you honored the accomplishments of those that came before you and were motivated to prove them wrong and not just lash out when they reminded you of how much further you had to go to be embraced by the elite.
“Just put it this way: The league is soft and these guys are sensitive, period. I was sensitive [as a player] too but I never went back at [older players]. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain never said s— to [support] me. Did I cry about It? No. Kareem said in the paper one time when they asked him, ‘Shaq is doing great, he has numbers similar to yours, what do you think?’ His response was, ‘Well, he hasn’t won a championship yet.’ I could have gone back at him, but I didn’t. I sucked it up like a real man and was like, ‘OK, watch this'," said Shaq.
Source: uproxx.com
