No sooner had Dr. J revised his Top Ten list than Shaq comes out with one of his own. Maybe he was peeved that Julius Erving hadn't included him in the list, so Shaq made sure he was in the Top Five. The two players are from different generations and the lists reflect that. Dr. J considers his Top Five unalterable as those are the guys he grew up idolizing. Interestingly, Shaq offered no such equivalent except maybe Kareem, whom he had at the bottom of his list.
I never much liked Shaq, although I admit he was a dominant force in the NBA. Dropping the three-second rule helped as he essentially camped out in the lane, especially in his latter years when he was no longer very mobile. In his prime, he claimed to have a 32-inch vertical which is highly doubtful, although he did smash a few backboards in his day.
There was no other center at the time who could match up with him physically. Hakeem and the Admiral had retired. You had big guys like Yao Ming and Mark Eaton but Shaq weighed nearly 400 lbs. so it wasn't like you were going to stop him. Even when teams had centers who could shoot from behind the arc, Shaq didn't care. He figured he could outscore them thereby balancing out the stat line. He was putting up close to 30 points per game in his peak years.
Still, he fell well short of Kareem and Wilt in total points, and both had multiple MVPs. Kareem six and Wilt four. Both also had numerous titles, Kareem six and Wilt two. Wilt would have had more had not he been stymied by Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics. Oh, and they both had much higher verticals, Kareem 40 and Wilt 48 inches. Yet, Shaq still considers himself better than these two centers that paved the way for a big lug like him to play in the league. He doesn't even talk about Bill Russell who had 11 rings and five MVPs.
The big difference between Dr. J and Shaq is that Dr. J truly recognizes greatness and is humble enough not to include himself on the list. Unlike Shaq, Dr. J was a game changer. His style of play marked a turning point in the NBA, opening up the game with gravity defying dunks. He initially bypassed the NBA in favor of the ABA. The NBA was a tight knit club of only 12 teams and more cities wanted in, so a rival league was formed that was far more entertaining to watch, luring guys like Dr. J, David "Skywalker" Thompson, and George "The Iceman" Gervin to their league. All went on to have successful NBA careers when the two leagues merged in 1976. Dr. J had the best career as he was able to win a ring with the Philadelphia 76ers in 1983.
Shaq was 11 years old, so he would have seen all this growing up, but for him Magic Johnson was the man of the 80s leading the Lakers to multiple titles. No love for Larry Bird apparently. He rarely has anything good to say about contemporary players although he changed his tune on Jokic after the big man won an NBA title. I imagine he still considers himself much better than the "Slavic Lasagna."
I suppose a lot of people find Shaq's trash talk entertaining. He anchors the crew at Inside the NBA, and has a large and very loyal following on social media. I've run into his minions a few times when posts extolling his game pop up on my timeline and I dare to voice my criticism. Much of what constitutes fame is your ability to keep yourself in the news and Shaq does a very good job of this. Dr. J takes a softer approach, having been part of the old school. He and Bird and others kept their trash talking on the court.
Athletically, I don't see the league as being any faster or stronger than it was 50 years ago. The game itself looks a lot like it did in the 70s. There has been no one who has yet to approach Wilt Chamberlain's storied athleticism. Michael Jordan had nothing over Julius Erving or David Thompson, and the guards today don't present anything that Jerry West and Oscar Robertson already possessed. Yet to hear some of these Young Turks talk you would think they could run circles around these legends of the game.
Then there is this business of chasing rings. This is one reason Dr. J kept both LeBron and Shaq off his list, although Shaq refuses to admit it despite playing for six teams during his career. He was first lured to LA when Orlando failed to win an NBA title during Michael Jordan's first retirement. Shaq ran up against a much more agile and gifted center in Hakeem Olajuwon. Still, Shaq was hailed as the next Wilt Chamberlain as he was much younger than Hakeem and had his whole career ahead of him. He nabbed three rings under Phil Jackson's leadership at LA and then hopped over to Miami where he garnered one more ring under Pat Riley. Still not content, Shaq joined a resurgent Suns team in his later years, hoping to add one more. When that failed he went to Cleveland and then Boston to close out his 20-year career. Yet, Shaq often chastises LeBron for doing the same.
In Dr. J's time, players didn't move around quite so much. You did have some high profile examples of LA luring Wilt away from Philadelphia and later Kareem from Milwaukee. There was no salary cap and LA was well endowed so it could pay its players top dollar. Still, LA had a hard time beating Boston, which had great team loyalty. Bill Russell stayed with the Celtics despite the rampant racism in the city because he loved Red Auerbach and his fellow players. Wilt had tried to coax him into coming out to LA, flaunting his new found wealth.
Regardless of what you think about basketball, the pantheon of players stems from the 1950s and 60s. These were the guys who opened up the game, faced a tremendous amount of abuse as illustrated in the recent Netflix documentary on Bill Russell and fought through it so that other Black players wouldn't have it so tough. In that sense no Top Five list is complete without Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Shaq doesn't hold a jock strap to these guys.
Shaq wasn't even the best center of his era. That honor goes to Hakeem Olajuwon. I would also put David Robinson and Tim Duncan ahead of him. These guys didn't chase rings, they stuck with their teams thick and thin with Tim garnering one more ring than Shaq. What made them great is that they played both ends of the floor. They didn't camp out in the lane and use his enormous weight to intimidate other players like Shaq did. Even still he found himself getting schooled because of his big mouth, like the time he made fun of Yao Ming's entry into the league.
Dr. J has it right. His Top Five will always be the best as they were truly legends of the game. You can make cases for Michael Jordan and LeBron James but not Shaquille O'Neal. He was an anomaly but not someone who significantly changed the game, and he certainly would have been no match for Wilt Chamberlain.
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