You were extremely dominant back when you played. Remember all those championships you won? That was so cool! You won a whole bunch. I think it was four.
Let me check.
Yeah! You won the NBA Championship four whole times!
Let me check something else real quick.
Yeah! Only 26 people ever have more than that! We don’t have to talk about who any of them are. 😄
You even won MVP one time! You know Isaiah Hartenstein? Yeah, I think he’s really good. You were way better than him. He’s never going to win an MVP. But you did!
And three whole NBA Finals MVP’s. I wonder what that must have been like.
Remember when you rapped? That was interesting! It was cool to see you doing something with your free time.
You’re really tall too! Some people find that to be a marker of status!
When you think about it, you were really one of the best basketball players of all time, while also rapping and being, like, super tall. You’re succeeding in so many facets of life.
Shaq, you don’t have to do this
You like doing this kind of thing where you try to up yourself by putting down modern day NBA players or how the modern NBA is played. In this particular case, it was shots at Chet Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama.
Outside of making you feel good, probably, it does a few things. A few things that you might find both good and bad, but I find all bad.
It makes the people who think the game was Better and Tougher and More Good in your era go all “Rahhhhh! Yeah!!! Speak to em, Shaq!”
Ew.
It also, among the vanishingly few people who still take you credibly as a basketball analyst, might change someone’s own native thought from “Chet and Wemby both seem really good.” to “Shaq says Chet and Wemby are soft or something, so I guess they’re actually bad.”
That is a bad thing to have happened. These people do exist, and we must care for them like children.
And it also makes more and more people eventually have that “straw that breaks the camel’s back” moment with you. The more people learn about the game, the more people that grow up with today’s game, the less you sound attached from the reality of the game in front of you, the fewer and fewer fans will remain or will be picked up along the way.
I’m sure you have insight just as much as you have pride. Come on. Just be nice.