Shaq has vowed to keep JaVale McGee's name out of his mouth, but that doesn't mean he has to bite his tongue when it comes to anyone else in the NBA, including Kevin Durant.
During the Shaq vs JaVale feud a few weeks ago, KD backed his teammate and also added that Shaq didn't had "no skills."
Shaq initially responded to Durant on twitter, advising him to stay in his lane, but he expanded on those comments prior to yesterday's taping of Inside The NBA.
O'Neal told The Crossover that KD really can't talk to him like that because he hasn't won a ring. Additionally, he said the league is soft and the guys are too sensitive.
Read Shaq's comments on KD, and the crying that goes on in the NBA today, transcribed by Sports Illustrated.
“KD doesn’t have G–14 Classification,” O’Neal told The Crossover, referring to his oft-mentioned “unwritten” designation that applies to players who have won titles. “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. 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.’”
“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.’ A lot of guys, these days, when you say anything about them they start whimpering and crying.”
On top of that, Shaq addressed the aggressive email that Mark Cuban sent to Bleacher Report, forcing them to remove a tweet that showed Dirk Nowitzki shooting an airball accompanied by the caption, "Dirk Forever."
In short, Shaq says nobody is exempt from bloopers.
“I like Mark, but that was just uncalled for,” O’Neal said, noting that he was “really disappointed” that Cuban chose to make an issue out of the post. “Dirk shot an airball, Bleacher Report put ‘Dirk Forever.’ So what? They did it to Mike [Jordan], they did it to Magic [Johnson], they did it to Kareem, they did it to me.
“Nobody is exempt from bloopers. I don’t care how good you are. Nobody. Dirk is a legend, but he’s not a legend enough where we can’t show his mistakes. You heard it here first.”
