Written by: O

Shaquille O’Neal has always taken the opportunity to disrespect Kobe Bryant, especially after the Los Angeles Lakers traded him to Miami in the summer of 2004, so him freesyling about how “Kobe Ain’t Nothing Without {Me},” was nothing new to basketball fans, but this was not just about Kobe.  The rap sounded like a bitter old man, which is unlike Shaq, who usually comical at every opportunity.  He did not just disrespect Kobe, but also Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Patrick Ewing and gave an unusual look into Shaq’s personal life, something Shaq very rarely goes into publicly.  Was this Shaq being Shaq or something entirely different?

Shaq started his rap by disrespecting Kobe at the beginning and people went wild.  This is not surprising because it can be argued that the best rivalry this decade has not been Yankees versus Red Sox or Colts versus Patriots, but Shaq versus Kobe.  While the beginning of the “feud” started before this decade, it really did not get wildly popular until after the two teammates started winning NBA titles together as Lakers.  The 2000-01 season was where their “disagreements” became common stories, not just in Los Angeles, but for the entire country.  They almost had a daily story about just them and what they said about each other.

Throughout this time, the Lakers kept winning titles and when they would win titles, they would “be nice” to each other.  It came up again at the beginning of the 2003-04 season when Kobe was charged with a rape allegation and the two took turns blasting each other publicly.  After a disappointing loss to the Pistons in the NBA finals, the Lakers traded Shaq to Miami and Shaq publicly blamed the loss and later, the fall of the Lakers on Kobe.  Eventually, they again appeared to “make up” until this past weekend.

The first surprise with Shaq’s rap was his “shots” at Jabbar and Ewing.  Shaq is universally known of one of the greatest centers in the history of the NBA.  While this is the case, one of the centers considered greater than Shaq would be Jabbar, who won 6 NBA titles and 6 MVPs in his 20 seasons, mostly as a Laker.  That seem to come from nowhere since Kareem has never been anything but complimentary of Shaq.  Now Shaq and Patrick Ewing were contemporaries and their early battles were commonplace on national television, so this was not that surprising except that Ewing has been retired in 2001.  Shaq has always thought of himself as one of the best centers ever and has never hid this fact.

What was new was Shaq letting people know about his personal life.  People knew that Shaq was getting a divorce this year and knew how Kobe “broke the code” and ratted on Shaq when he faced his own difficulties in 2004.  What people probably did not know was that Shaq has had a vasectomy.  The question is why would he bring this up freestyling in New York?

To me, this is about it being Shaq’s last chance for the limelight and everyone, including Shaq, knows that he gets instant limelight whenever he goes out of his way to disrespect Kobe.  The problem is that Kobe and the Lakers may be about to go a title run, so Shaq had to say his “view” now because once Kobe wins another title, Shaq will not be able to rant against Kobe anymore.  My questions are the “shots” he took at Jabbar and a certain extent Ewing and his public declarations about his divorce.  Was he just freestyling or was it the ranting of a bitter man?

Tags: Sports

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Random Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.