Okay, so I was just scrolling through this Reddit thread about Shaq and Charles Barkley on TNT, you know, the whole Inside the NBA crew. The clip that kicked it all off was Shaq interrupting Chuck and then, well, basically arguing against a point Chuck wasn’t even making about Victor Wembanyama. Everyone’s just like, “Bruh, what are you even talking about?” The consensus is that Shaq completely missed the mark—Chuck was praising Wemby, and Shaq just went off on some unrelated tangent, almost as if he was just waiting for a chance to steer the conversation somewhere else.
And that “somewhere else” almost always seems to be Nikola Jokic. That’s the real meat of the discussion here. People are pointing out that this isn’t a one-off thing; it’s a pattern. Shaq uses any opportunity, even when talking up a young star like Wemby, to take a shot at Jokic. The top-voted comments are all about this. There’s a strong feeling that Shaq is deeply insecure about Jokic’s success and his place in the all-time center rankings. Folks are saying he’s jealous—jealous that Jokic has more MVPs, that his game is so uniquely brilliant it baffles old-school big men, and maybe most of all, that Jokic genuinely doesn’t seem to care about Shaq’s opinions. They bring up that interview Jokic did with the Amazon crew where he said “This is much better,” which everyone took as a subtle dig at not having to deal with Shaq’s usual disrespect.
It’s not just Jokic, though. People are remembering him doing similar things to Luka Doncic after a playoff game-winner, dismissing it as “not impressive.” The thread is full of comments calling him petty, fragile, and insecure, with some pretty wild (and highly upvoted) anecdotes about his past behavior with teammates thrown in for good measure. The phrase “little d energy” got used, which, yeah, sums up the sentiment.
On the flip side, there’s a whole other layer to the chat about the players themselves. While some are rightly crowning Wemby as a generational talent already in the DPOY conversation, a lot of others are pumping the brakes, saying it’s way too early to put him in the same sentence as Jokic, who is the clear-cut best player on the planet. They’re talking about Jokic’s insane, historically efficient stats and how consistency over seasons is what truly matters. There’s a interesting side note about how Giannis Antetokounmpo feels oddly overlooked in all this, with people saying his sustained excellence is just taken for granted now.
Oh, and I almost forgot—amidst all the Shaq drama, there was a whole little detour about Charles Barkley’s weight loss! People were joking about how his suit looked huge on him now, which led to a mini-thread about Mounjaro and Ozempic, comparing GLP-1 agonists. A real random but funny aside.
So, to wrap it up, the thread is really about two things: it’s a roast session on Shaq’s perceived insecurity and his weird, persistent need to diminish Jokic, and it’s a more nuanced basketball debate about appreciating current greatness (Jokic, Giannis) while getting excited about future potential (Wemby), without rushing to compare them. The overall mood is that Shaq’s antics are tired, Chuck is often the voice of reason, and Jokic’s silent, dominant play is the best clapback of all.
