There are few things that make Shaquille O’Neal more upset than a center that cannot dominate on offense. He has spent much of his career on television crushing highly paid NBA centers who don’t put up the offensive production he thinks they should, especially in the playoffs. For a long time, Dwight Howard was the focal point of his ire — largely due to Howard co-opting the Superman nickname in Orlando — but more recently he’s set his sights on Rudy Gobert.
He certainly isn’t the only former (or current) player to call Gobert overrated, as Draymond Green has spent years crusading against Gobert’s reputation as the league’s best defender, but Shaq is certainly among the most vocal in criticism of the French big man. Gobert’s struggles against Dallas in the Western Conference Finals only escalated things, and in a recent video for Complex with his son Myles, Shaq declared Gobert the “WOAT (worst of all time) NBA Player” (watch the full clip here).
Myles then poked the bear even further, asking if Gobert was worse than Ben Simmons, which led to Shaq calling Simmons “another bum” and explaining why he had those two at the top — or I guess, bottom — of his WOAT rankings despite Myles’ attempts to apologize to Gobert.
“No because you know why? Cause I’m gonna tell you why. If you sign a contract for 250, show me 250,” Shaq said. “There’s a reason why I walk funny and why I can’t turn my neck and can’t do that, cause I played for my 120. So you got guys like him that f**k the system over. They’re making all this money and they can’t f**king play. So I don’t respect guys like that. Every time I make these comments, people think I’m hating, but these are facts. You got teachers, you got firemen, you’ve got doctors who got real jobs who don’t get paid sh*t.”
His argument isn’t that they’re the least skilled players the NBA’s seen, but that they’ve done the least for the most, which is certainly a way you could look to quantify the worst player. That said, saying “people think I’m hating, but these are facts” while calling Gobert and Simmons the worst players ever is pretty funny as it’s far from an objective statement.
Gobert will forever be a lightning rod because he has been the best in the league at one thing (drop defense) and is otherwise mostly an average big man. How do you quantify that value? No one can seem to agree on that, and the fact that Gobert makes max money drives a lot of people (not just Shaq) crazy. Still, calling him the worst player in league history is a wild statement, as I think you’d have a tough time getting most Rudy detractors to even join you in that sentiment. Simmons, meanwhile, is a Hall of Famer at the bank and at this point you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that’s still a believer that getting back to an All-Star level is still possible, so can probably find more folks to join you there.
The truth is, there is no player type that is more divisive than a player who is elite at skills that are not scoring the ball. No one in recent years embodies that more than Gobert and Simmons, and thus you end up with statements like this from Shaq (who, for all his skill as a scorer in the post, got torched for years for being unable to hit free throws).