Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal got together recently to address their ongoing feud stemming from the beef they had back in the early 2000s.
When you win three out of four NBA Finals you play in together, you’d think that teammates would become bonded together forever. But Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal have notoriously been at odds with one another basically ever since they paired up in the late 90s and then started winning in the 2000s.
Despite the titles and all of the fame, the tandem of Shaq and Kobe is never going to be a cuddly relationship. They beefed in the media while teammates and have taken potshots at one another int he years since. Nothing has spilled over into full on rage, but it’s a relationship much like a divorced couple who can co-exist but not get along with one another.
That doesn’t mean the two aren’t cognizant of the beef they have between them — enough so that they can get together and dish about it.
Kobe went on Shaq’s podcast to discuss the beef they had, and for the most part still kind of have.
"“To me, the most important thing was really, ‘just keep your mouth shut.’ You don’t need to go to the press with stuff. You keep it internal, and we have our arguments and our disagreements, but I think having our debates within the press was something I wish would’ve been avoided. But it did kind of create this whirlwind around us as a team with myself and Shaq and the press and the media that just put so much pressure on us as an organization.”"
So while they talked — which is great — it doesn’t really sound like the hatchet was buried in anyway between Shaq and Kobe. That being said, there was the impression given off that they have started to mature and realize that their squabbles early in their careers don’t define what they created together in Los Angeles.
Kobe will never see eye-to-eye with Shaq, that’s just a fact of life. But progress seems to be getting made as far as the two just moving on and being happy with what they won together and not focusing on the negative attention they garnered while playing together in the early 2000s.