Shaquille O’Neal and Draymond Green recently had an interesting conversation regarding which of their teams would win in a hypothetical matchup. As most NBA fans should be aware, Shaq is an NBA legend and widely regarded as the most dominant and unstoppable player that the league has ever seen.
On the contrary, Draymond is acknowledged to be one of the best defenders in the NBA. Shaq managed to win 3 NBA championships consecutively alongside Kobe Bryant and Draymond has won 4 championships with the Golden State Warriors.
During a recent podcast hosted by Shaq, the two of them debated and shared their point of view on how a potential matchup between the prime Lakers and Warriors would go down. Now that the context has been provided, fans must certainly be interested in finding out what the two of them had to say on the subject.
Draymond Green opines that Andrew Bogut could help stop Shaquille O’Neal
Before diving into the details that Draymond and Shaq discussed, it is important for fans to keep in mind that this entire debate is hypothetical. After all, the Shaq and Kobe Lakers played a very different style of basketball when compared to the Warriors dynasty.
Draymond Green claimed that he and former NBA star Andrew Bogut would double-team Shaquille O’Neal under the paint in order to stop him. Shaq completely dismissed this notion by claiming that Draymond was too small to deny O’Neal the ball and that Bogut would be in foul trouble well before Shaq got into a sense of flow and rhythm.
“You right about that. But however, Bogut gonne be in foul trouble…When I’m running down the court, he’s gonna try to muscle me with that weak as*. He gonna get 1 foul and he gonna get 2 fouls. So who’s your backup center?”To that question, Green responded by stating that he would be the Warriors’ backup center. Shaq was shocked by this response and asked Draymond to stop talking if he held any notion that he could stop O’Neal from scoring. When Draymond changed his stance and claimed that JaVale McGee would be the Warriors’ backup center, Shaq did not acknowledge this statement as well.
Shaquille O’Neal stands firm on the claim that he and the Lakers would be unstoppable
One can certainly understand why Shaquille O’Neal feels that no one on the Golden State Warriors had a chance to guard him and find a fair amount of success. After all, O’Neal played in a very physical era. He was so dominant that teams would resort to fouling him merely so that he would have to earn his points at the free-throw line.
In this discussion, neither Draymond nor Shaq discussed the impact that Kobe Bryant or the Splash Brothers would have on the court. It appeared as if they merely debated how the possessions on the interior could play out. In any case, fans are left wondering which team would have won a 7 game series between these two successful dynasties.