Shaquille O'Neal on Kevin Durant: He has no right to criticize me until he wins a title

The Warriors star called O'Neal 'childish' for targeting JaVale McGee on 'Shaqtin' a Fool'

Weeks after Golden State Warriors star called Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter threat to JaVale McGee “childish,” the Hall of Famer and TNT analyst has fired back: O’Neal doesn’t believe Durant has the right to criticize him because Durant has yet to win an NBA championship, he told Sports Illustrated’s Ben Golliver:

“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.’”

…

“LeBron has a lot of clearance because he’s won championships,” O’Neal said. “But when a guy who hasn’t won championships makes comments, you say, ‘How do you know?’ … [Durant] was just trying to stick up for his teammate. If you read into what he said, none of his s--- made sense. Well, actually some of it made sense. He said I was strong and I bullied people. Of course, that’s exactly what I did. I’m not going to go shoot jumpers and do all of that.

“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.”

Wow. A retired player called the league “soft” and invoked garbage macho language. Haven’t seen this one before! Honestly, O’Neal might as well have called Durant a wuss and challenged him to an arm wrestling match. That’s the level of discourse we have here. 

It’s possible I am the wrong person to analyze all this, as I’m afraid that when I read O’Neal’s distinction between “championship guys” and players who haven’t won a ring, my eyes rolled so hard that they might have fallen out of their sockets and onto my desk. Do I need to explain that winning a title doesn’t magically make anybody’s opinions more valid? A champion recently said that he thinks the Earth is flat. 

In fairness to O’Neal, some of Durant’s criticisms of him were off-base. Durant said that O’Neal “didn’t have no skill,” implying that the center simply bullied his way to his four titles, three Finals MVP awards and 15 All-Star selections. That is easily disprovable by hopping on YouTube and watching how O’Neal moved, passed, finished around the basket and protected the paint. Shaq had every right to be offended by that, but his response was, once again, childish.