Kevin Garnett slams Bill Simmons’ notion that Shaquille O’Neal was out of shape: “When you’re out of shape, you’re not scoring 25 a night”

KG stood up for O’Neal after Simmons criticized his conditioning throughout his career.

Shaquille O’Neal was a lot of things — a Hall of Famer, four-time NBA champion, MVP, three-time Finals MVP and allegedly one of the most notoriously out-of-shape superstars the league has ever seen. For many, Shaq is the most dominant player to ever live; for others, he is the single greatest waste of generational potential ever. Whatever side of the fence you’re on, looking back on O’Neal’s career is an intriguing exercise.

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Long-time analyst and NBA personality Bill Simmons firmly believes O’Neal was the laziest superstar he’s ever seen. Kevin Garnett, however, wants the world to know that Shaq wasn’t out of shape during his career.

KG calls out Simmons

Simmons and Garnett have had a connection for quite a few years. Bill is a long-time, die-hard Boston Celtics fan and KG became a franchise legend after leading the squad to the 2008 NBA championship. The two have since had a great relationship, with Garnett admiring Simmons’ love for the C’s and the latter thinking the world of the forward who brought a title to his city.

While the duo could agree on many aspects of the game, when it came to Shaq and his work ethic, they are worlds apart. The pair caught up on Simmons’ podcast, and KG wouldn’t let him get away with spinning the narrative that O’Neal was out of shape throughout his career.

“You didn’t play against Shaq. Shaq’s power is brute strength. Once he got to the Lakers, he was on some Superman, Ironman, putting everybody in the basket, and that was all predicated off of Phil, telling him to build himself up that you’re stronger coming down the Playoffs. He looked out of shape; he still averaged 25, 12, and something else. Get the f*ck out of here. That’s not out of shape. When you’re out of shape, you’re not scoring 25 a night,” he said.

Personal experience

Day after day, year after year, NBA media personalities proclaim their basketball opinions to the world and declare it as the Bible. Luckily for us, it’s become increasingly more common in the modern era for former players to dispel the fallacies and speak the truth into existence.

Usually, their insight is based on personal experience, and that’s exactly what KG relied on.

In all fairness to Simmons, this is a nuanced argument with multiple layers. For one, Garnett may have a point that it’s nearly impossible to average 25 points per game if you aren’t in (somewhat) decent shape. We are talking about the best athletes in the world, and being able to produce night in and night out speaks to a certain baseline of conditioning.

On the other hand, Garnett’s views also conflict with former Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, who publicly stated that he felt Shaq wasn’t in top-tier shape. Bryant was a relentless and unforgiving worker who could never make peace with O’Neal turning up to training camp out of shape or not game-ready.

For him, it was all about setting an example, and he took a completely different approach to his counterpart, who used the regular season to steadily play his way into shape as the months went on.

Two things can be true at the same time

By season’s end, it was hard to argue with the results, given that “Diesel” was consistently the most influential matchup nightmare for the opposition in any given series. Doubling him was a requisite rather than part of an elaborate game plan, and it still didn’t work, particularly in the early 2000s, as he stormed his way to three-straight Finals MVP en route to the last three-peat we’ve seen in NBA history.

It’s hard to say which method was correct, given Shaq was arguably the most dominant player we’ve ever seen. Still, there’s always room to mentally explore how much higher his ceiling could have been if he took conditioning seriously.

Either way, the divergent opinions between Simmons, Kobe, and Garnett often mean the truth is stuck somewhere in the middle. Could Shaq have taken care of his body and been in better shape during his career? Sure. But even still, O’Neal having a solid baseline level of conditioning that clearly allowed him to dominate anyone who stood in his way can also be true.

When two opinions collide, context always matters. No one is going to argue that Kobe or Kevin are wrong, but fundamentally, they’re both trying to make similar but completely different points.

Simmons’ opinion acts as a general observation shared by the masses in the NBA community, but Garnett wants the world to stop and think about throwing certain notions around where the numbers tell a different story.