Basketball icon Shaquille O’Neal recently had to sit down with Draymond Green and check him for “disrespecting” the late Kobe Bryant, leaving the four-time NBA champion rethinking his thoughts about the Los Angeles Lakers.
Green was a guest on the May 22 episode of Shaq’s “The Big Podcast.” At one point during the sit-down, Shaq and Draymond began debating whether the Los Angeles Lakers or Golden State Warriors championship teams would win a hypothetical matchup.
O’Neal was also curious about which Warriors player Green thought could guard him, Although O’Neal strongly suggested one former player should be eliminated from consideration. “Please, don’t say Andrew motherf— Bogut,” he warned.
“I don’t think any one player on our team could have guarded you,” Green said. “I do think there were defensive schemes that we could have thrown at you to affect you.”
Green continued, “One is not letting you get the ball, so we’re going to guard you with a guy in front of you and a guy behind you.”
But O’Neal eventually asked Green about Golden State’s backup plan if Bogut had to go to the bench. Green suggested he would have no issue handling the team’s duties at the center position in lieu of Bogut.
“Me,” Green said in response to who would step in for Bogut.
“Draymond, stop,” O’Neal instructed Green.
While the conversation became noticeably tense at various points throughout the episode, O’Neal appeared particularly taken back by Green’s suggestion of who would guard Bryant.
“Who guarding Kobe?” O’Neal asked.
“Klay [Thompson],” Green quickly responded as O’Neal paused in disbelief.
“We’ll continue this conversation on your podcast,” O’Neal said, seemingly ready to dismiss Green’s comment, but not before he quickly made a case for Bryant.
“Ain’t nobody guarding him, and ain’t nobody guarding me,” O’Neal said.
He was also confident that none of the Warriors four championship winning teams had the ability to knock off any of the Lakers 2000, 2001, or 2002 teams.
“Ain’t nobody guarding Steph [Curry] ain’t nobody guarding Klay [Thompson]. I understand that, but y’all not beating us,” Shaq exclaimed.
“Yeah, I think we are probably in five, maybe six,” Green hit back, to which Shaq gave him another ice-cold stare.
“Six what? Six years when I’m 40?” asked Shaq.
Fans also chimed in on the debate. “Those Lakers were unstoppable for a reason. Please stop nobody today is stopping that Shaq,” a fan wrote on X.
“This is just silly. Draymond is disrespecting Shaq, Kobe & the Triangle. No way could’ve guarded Shaq like that and not get burned on the backside by Kobe and the other role players. He should just say we think we could’ve outscored you,” another person said.
The conversation later shifted to whether or not Kobe Bryant could be considered a GOAT in the game.
“I always ask people how come my guy’s not in that conversation,” said Shaq.
While Draymond feels that Kobe deserves to be in the GOAT conversation, he offered an explanation for why he believes the Black Mamba’s name isn’t often mentioned.
“Number one, he played with you, and people hold that against him,” Draymond begins. “Number two, Kobe kind of fell in a weird time, and what I mean by that is Mike left the league, and when Mike left, y’all were dominating. Then you left the Lakers, the Lakers they had a few rough years.”
Draymond continued, “And while it wasn’t going great, there was a young guy from Cleveland starting to make his hay. And so in the years where Kobe could have been dominating, which he was from a numbers standpoint but they weren’t winning nothing, in those years Bron was making his hay and starting to make his name.”
In short, Draymond says, “Kobe was the number one in the league, like the top guy. I don’t think it was long enough for everybody to put him in that conversation because Bron then came and put his name in the conversation.”
This isn’t the first time that Shaq has shown confidence in his early 2000s Lakers team. In an interview with USA Today Sports, he characterized the 2001 championship team as “one of the best teams of all time.”
“I think we’d easily win,” O’Neal said. “Other people might feel different, [the Warriors] might feel different. But we had one of the best teams of all time in 2001 when we went 15-1 in the playoffs. We would’ve gone 16-0, but A.I. [Allen Iverson] went off on us and stepped over Ty Lue.”
