Shaquille O’Neal discusses the stars of Australian basketball, his favourite player and more
In an exclusive interview, NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal weighs in on how Australian basketball is tracking and reveals his current favourite NBA player.
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NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal has hailed the state of Australian basketball – and slam dunked his take on the greatest player and team of all time.
Four time champion and 15 time NBA All Star O’Neal said his appreciation for Aussie hoops went back to Andrew Gaze’s college basketball career in the late 1980s and had been reinvigorated by the recent rise of the likes of Patty Mills, Ben Simmons and Josh Giddey in the NBA.
“I know Australia has got a lot of great players who have represented their country and represented the NBA,” he said.
“Patty Mills is one of my favourite players.
“For me it started with Andrew Gaze at Seaton Hall, I played against Luc Longley who was a fine player.
“Little Shane (Heal) came out of nowhere and now you’ve got Josh Giddey, Ben Simmons, so you guys have got a lot of fine basketball players.”
In an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun, O’Neal nominated Golden State champion Steph Curry as his favourite current player.
But he said this year’s championship Warriors, their record breaking 2015-16 team that finished the season 73-9 or even Michael Jordan’s legendary Chicago Bulls squads would be no match for the Los Angeles Lakers he and Kobe Bryant helped dominate the NBA in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“They tried to cause a rift between my favourite player and me because he said they would beat us and I love Steph and I can respect that,” he said.
“But I said ‘no, we would beat you’.
“Debates like this will always be great because there is no way you can ever prove it.
“I say ‘whose going to guard me?’
“They say ‘we are going to put you in the pick and roll, we are going to play small ball.’
“But we will never know, it’s stuff that will never happen but you can dream about it.
“Like, what if Floyd Mayweather fights Muhammad Ali?
“You can definitely get into an argument about who would win but we will never know.”
In Melbourne and Sydney for a series of “A Night with Shaquille O’Neal” speaking tours presented by The Hour Group, he said of the six NBA teams he played on, the Lakers and Miami were most fun “because we won.
O’Neal said “there will never be another Kobe”.
“I was blessed to play with him, to push him and to mentor him,” he said.
He said the age old debate about who was the greatest of all time was a choice of three – “Jordan, Kobe, LeBron … then daylight,” he said.
Told Bryant had declared Simmons would live with regret if he got to the end of his career without developing a jump shot when the late Lakers legend visited Melbourne in 2019, O’Neal said: “I’d agree with that.”
And he had his advice to any young athlete dreaming of making it to the top of their game.
“Make sure you listen to the people that have been there and make sure you listen to the people that can get you there,” he said.
“Secondly, be a thief … look at other people’s moves and steal them.
“Whoever your favourite basketball player is, steal all the moves you can from them and practice it.”
Peter.rolfe@news.com.au
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