This past week, former NBA player and NBA Hall of Fame member Shaquille O’Neal took to twitter and engaged on a heated argument that was reminiscent of drake’s line “trigger fingers turned to twitter fingers.” His target – Golden State Warrior’s center JaVale McGee. McGee responded to Shaq’s segment of Inside the NBA on TNT, Shaqtin’ A Fool, in which Shaq gave McGee the nickname “Doctor Strange” and created a vignette of clips of bad plays from McGee. You can watch the clip here.
Over the years, McGee has been a regular on the segment, and because of the segment he has gained the notoriety of being a bad player with a low basketball I.Q. His current coach, Steve kerr spoke to the media and mentioned how if it had not been for current teammate Andre Iguodala sticking up for JaVale, JaVale might not have made the team. Shaq has clearly helped to tarnish the reputation of McGee and as such JaVale might have missed out of more lucrative deals around the league because of this.
Shaquille O’Neal is the textbook definition of a bully. He is someone who cannot take criticism and is afraid of becoming irrelevant in the sports world. A couple of weeks ago, he criticized his panel partner Charles Barkley for criticizing LeBron James on his apparent lack of desire to compete. Now, Shaq looks like a hypocrite, going as far as to threaten McGee and calling him a bum. This seems to be a pattern in this internet driven society, you have people that create fake accounts to troll and bully others online because they feel safe behind their online moniker.
People like Shaq get away with their actions because people often do not stand up to them, and as in the case of McGee when he stood up for himself the internet began to call him soft. Shaq should get some sort of penalization for his actions, he has been criticizing JaVale for over 4 years and it seems that this has transcended from jokes and critiques to animosity. By calling JaVale a bum, and by giving him the nickname of “Doctor Strange” Shaq has antagonized McGee and he is hiding behind his past accomplishments as a player to get away with his comments on national television.
In the long run, nothing will happen to Shaq, he is too big of a name to fail and as for JaVale, he probably will never be an NBA hall of famer. By next week people will probably forget about this whole ordeal and move on with their lives, chasing for the next “hot” trend on twitter. My bet, the next trend will have the words “resist” on it.
