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Shaquille O’Neal continues to take potshots at Rudy Gobert.
O’Neal hosted his former Heat teammate, Udonis Haslem, on his “Big” podcast this week, and asked him to verify what he would’ve done to Gobert in the locker room had the two ever been on the same team.
“If he was on my team, what would I have done to him?” O’Neal asked Haslem.
Haslem, after seeking clarification, said matter-of-factly that O’Neal would have put his hands on Gobert.
Nevertheless, O’Neal said that razzing teammates into action was a motivational tactic.
“It may sound personal, but it’s motivation. That’s all it is. It was just motivation,” O’Neal stated.
Haslem affirmed that O’Neal giving him hard love wound up being a blessing for him.
“Having somebody like you, every day in my year, and having an expectation of me … when you have a great player that has an expectation and a belief in you, then that just helps you believe in yourself. It helps you have the same expectations of yourself,” Haslem said.
“You doing that for me, helped me be the teammate that I was. I knew you had those expectations of me and I didn’t want to let you down.”
Gobert has been one of the more polarizing players in the league, as he has been in a public spat for years with the Warriors’ Draymond Green.
“When I made the comments about Rudy Gobert, people think it’s personal. Yeah, it is personal for guys like David Robinson, who only made $116 million,” Shaq said. Fabulous f–king player… Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Most he ever made was $3 million… Patrick Ewing made $112 million. Bill Russell, $100,000. Just play hard. You’re making $250 million. Play hard. That’s all I’m saying.”
O’Neal and Gobert, now a center on the Timberwolves, have been sniping back and forth for several years.
In 2021, when Gobert signed a $205 million contract with the Jazz, O’Neal took a dig at Gobert’s pedestrian scoring output.
“I’m not gonna hate, but this should be an inspiration to all the little kids out there,” O’Neal said at the time. “You average 11 points in the NBA, you can get $200 million.
“He’s got a great agent, and I’m happy for him and his family. With the new rules, you have a pot of money, you have to spend that money. I’m happy for him, but this is a moment for a lot of kids who think they can’t make it.”
The following year, O’Neal opined that if Gobert, an elite defender, were matched up with him, he would “back his little skinny ass up under the rim.”
“I would lock his ass up,” Gobert responded in a comment on Instagram.
Last year, when Green put Gobert in a headlock, O’Neal defended the maneuver.
“I don’t like to be a hypocrite of the situation, I would have did the same thing,” O’Neal said at the time. “You got to stick up for your teammates.”
Earlier this month, Gobert responded to O’Neal calling him the worst player of all-time.
“It is sad to see someone that has accomplished as much as you did @SHAQ both in sport and business still be triggered by another man’s finances and accomplishments. I get the entertainment part but unlike other folks, you don’t need that stuff to stay relevant,” Gobert wrote on X.
