Shaq Goes Hard At Kobe!

[bigted]

Shaq's not on the level of KRS or Will but I'd personally rather hear from him than a lot of other rappers out on the radio, his raps are fun, Kobe sucks anyway so I think he deserved it too.

[MaxFly]

I don't blame SHAQ one bit... because of Kobe he is getting a divorce.. Kobe did him wrong in the past, and I saw this on youtube about 5 minutes ago. LOL

KOBE tell me how my @$$ taste! LOL classic..

xo,

cookie

I totally missed this thread, but I have to reply to this...

I think Kobe gets a bad rap beyond what he deserves for what went down in Colorado and what he said about Shaq subsequently. What was done and said was obviously inexuseable, and I think he's paid dearly for that in public opinion and in the media, deservingly. But when Shaq and others start accusing him of being the reason Shaq is getting a divorce, I can't co-sign that. Shaq's wife knew about his philandering before Kobe made his comments and she's known about some of the new ones that occured long after Kobe made his comments. Kobe made his comments in the summer of 2003, Shaq and Shaunie filed for divorce in the summer of 2007. From what I understand, she became fed up that he continuously cheated on her with other women. She in turn, cheated on him with her personal trainer and also diverted some money from their joint accounts. Shaq said that she was hiding money and so Shaq filed for divorce. Their divorce really has nothing to do with Kobe, and from what I understand, given the amount she knew about Shaq's other encounters with women before Kobe even made his comments, she wasn't surprised when stuff came out. Again, it doesn't excuse what Kobe said. He apologized to Shaq personally for that. But I don't think that it's fair or right to draw the connection, as Shaq did, that Kobe is responsible for Shaq and Shaunie's break up.

In terms of the bigger issue at play here... I think people are willing to give Shaq a lot of leeway on some of the things he does and says, and as a result, Kobe's gotten the brunt of the blame for the fued with Shaq and their subsequent break up. It's somewhat understandable because Shaq is by far the more fun loving, likeable jokester of the two. He's the extrovert and Kobe's the introvert. If someone is going to be made the villain, it's Kobe, and the hero/victim, it's Shaq. But that's not the way things went down in LA... I'm not sure how much people know, so I'm just going to put a few things out there and then leave it up for discussion. I see people saying, "Kobe deserved it" and some other stuff, but I don't hear Kobe talking about Shaq, or dissing Shaq. He hasn't really said anything critical of Shaq since 2003 before the season started. I don't hear Kobe making fun of Shaq for getting kicked out of the playoffs in the first round, losing to a team that Kobe ended up beating on their road to the finals this year...(where they lost to my Celts :wickedwisdom: ).

No one is criticizing Shaq for forcing his way out of Miami because he didn't want to play for a losing team. In this particular instance, I think Shaq was just playing around, but it seems that certain people have taken it more seriously and have used it as a stepping stone to go at Kobe or revoice their dislike for him. Let's keep one thing in mind though... Shaq's the one talking here, and he's been the one talking for the last few years. He's been the one to take shots at Kobe through the media... and surprisingly, Kobe's the one who has remained relatively quiet. So on the real, who's being the more mature of the two. Lets put dislikes for either player aside and let's be real.

Here's an excert from Roland Lazenby's book, "Mindgames."

Still, Jackson's initial disappointment over not getting Pippen led him to forecast a 5-5 start for his team in November. And that came before an October 13 injury forced Bryant to miss the first 15 games on the schedule. Yet even a setback such as Bryant's broken wrist proved to be a blessing. It allowed the coaches to mold the team indentity, then to add Bryant's frenetic energy to the equation in December, like some sort of super-octane fuel.

It would also allow time for the rift between Bryant and O'Neal to begin healing. On that issue, Jackson wasted little time. "I'm going to stop some of the gossiping, stop some of the rumormongering among the personnel here," he promised that first day.

At the time, Jackson and his coaches didn't realize just how deep a divide they faced. After the season, Winter would confide that he was shocked by the level of hatred O'Neal expressed for Bryant when the coaches first arrived on the scene. "There was alot of hatred in his heart," Winter said, adding that O'Neal didn't hesitate to vent his feelings in team meetings. "He was saying really hateful things," Winter explained. "Kobe just took it and kept going."

...But Jackson put off the temptation to form a close relationship with Bryant. The coach correctly read that O'Neal's nature craved such a relationship, and Jackson turned just about all of his undivided attention to his relationship with O'Neal. The coach would later explain that the center did not have the same inquisitiveness as Jordan, and the conversations he had with O'Neal were not as expansive. Still, they spent much time talking. Early in the season, Bryant would point out that he had yet to sit down for an in-depth conversation with Jackson. Bryant kept expecting that conversation to occur. But it never would. Jackson kept his time for O'Neal. Some of the coaching staff pointed out that Bryant could have approached the coach about such a talk, but the young guard had such a strong sense of team issues that he seemed happy to let Jackson focus his efforts on soothing the center's harsh feelings.

...And those issues were still cooking on the team agenda, Fisher said. "It was kind of similar to a relationship between a man and a woman where you get upset with all of these things from the past that come up. That's really where alot of this stuff stemmed from. The coaches saw that alot of this stuff would come in due time. But we were so impatient because we felt we had dealt with it before." For a time, it seemed that no matter what Bryant did, O'Neal and other teammates wanted to find fault with it. Winter revealed that he finally put together a videotape to prove to O'Neal that Bryant was doing just what he was supposed to do. "I think Kobe is bending over backwards to get the ball in to Shaq," Winter would confide as the season progressed. "If there's a problem there- and I think we'll work it out- it's that I don't think Shaq appreciates what Kobe is trying to do to help his game."

Simply put, things were a lot more complicated than the "Well, Kobe is selfish" argument. Kobe has a share of the blame, no doubt... but I don't think Shaq is getting his fair share of blame... and it allows him to get away with a lot of things.

Edited July 12, 2008 by MaxFly

[JumpinJack AJ]

Shaq's not on the level of KRS or Will but I'd personally rather hear from him than a lot of other rappers out on the radio, his raps are fun, Kobe sucks anyway so I think he deserved it too.

That's what i'm talking about. I don't really follow sports or Kobe...tho' his persona that i've seen on TV never really struck me as the kinda person i would wanna follow. I just appriciate Shaq for the person he is and the way he appriciates Hip-Hop. I openly say i like his music but i'm not holding it on the level of the legends. But i like it back in the day and compared 2 the standards of the silly crap on the radio these days, Shaq is a lyrical god.

[bigted]

Check out this interesting ESPNMag.com Article On The Shaq-Kobe feud:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3508683

THIS JUST IN

I can't stop thinking about the Kobe-Shaq feud. It's endlessly compelling, like any good train wreck.

by Chuck Klosterman

People use the word "hate" a lot when they talk about sports. They use it so often, it has no meaning whatsoever.

Everyone in Minneapolis hates Brett Favre—unless, of course, he winds up playing there—even though most of them would feel nothing about him had the Falcons never traded him to Green Bay in 1992. Lots of people hated J.J. Redick when he was averaging 20 a game for Duke, but who hates a guy who's getting eight minutes a night in Orlando?

Sports hatred is situational and generally metaphorical. Play-by-play announcers remind us that the Raiders hate the Broncos and the Sox hate the Yankees, but those alleged on-field enemies share the same agents and eat in the same restaurants and tip the same exotic dancers. If sports hatred feels real to the hater, it's a self-styled fiction: hatred for the purpose of play. About 99% of the time, it's a totally constructed emotion.

But that final 1% is all I need.

This is why the tension between Shaq and Kobe continues to fascinate me, even deep in the doldrums of summer. I love thinking about it. It never stops being interesting. Shaq and Kobe hate each other for real; I'm convinced of this. They despise each other in a way that's not only rare in sports but rare in life. They hate each other so much that neither would ever admit it, lest the other man get some sort of abstract satisfaction from the admittance of the loathing. O'Neal dismisses the conflict as comedy, and Bryant pretends he doesn't care, but those are the predictable defense mechanisms they use when faced with uncomfortable emotions. The reality is they want to kill each other. I can't prove this, but it feels obvious. And it makes me like each a little more and a little less.

Every sports fan with a laptop and no life has heard O'Neal's freestyle rap about Kobe's inability to win a title on his own, punctuated by Shaq's relentless (and arguably valid) question, "Kobe, how my ass taste?" And everyone has found this material hilarious. The semi-extemporaneous lyrics also accuse Bryant of destroying Shaq's marriage (by reportedly telling Colorado police after his arrest for sexual assault that the Big Aristotle paid women for their silence after the ends of affairs), which is slightly less funny (although probably more valid). Now, Shaq is a funny guy and a charming fellow and—most important, at least from a PR perspective—a hyper-jolly goofball who likes to give toys to sick orphans. So as a culture, we tend to take his side.

But his rap was still pretty weird. Go back and watch it again. Its only goal was to humiliate and emasculate Bryant, and it was conducted in a context that left Bryant no recourse. O'Neal knew Kobe couldn't respond, which is why he seemed to enjoy the performance so much. If Kobe took the situation seriously and called a press conference, he would seem weak and humorless. If he tried to respond with a rap of his own, it would be an inorganic disaster: Kobe would probably try dressing like the 1981 version of Reggie Theus, hire the Neptunes and come across like a chick from Northern State (the Brooklyn hip-hop group, not the D2 Wolves from Aberdeen, S.D.).

Bryant can't do cool that isn't directly related to basketball. And this drives him crazy, because he wants people to like him. (I don't think he needs to be loved, necessarily—just liked. Or at least not actively disliked.) His only revenge is to tape a still from Kazaam on his bathroom mirror, stare at it every morning to remind himself of the man he hates, fixate on that hate at the gym for the next six hours and then drop 82 whenever LA plays Phoenix. He has no other option.

It's this mutual desire to humiliate that makes the hatred between Shaq and Kobe feel so different to me. This isn't like the feud between Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent—that was just two guys who wanted to punch each other because they were: a) superficially different, but b) fundamentally the same. That was competitive; this is personal. Kobe and Shaq want to destroy each other's persona. Each wants to damage his rival's legacy because, 20 years from now, their legacies are all either one will have. By stressing that Kobe "couldn't do it without me," O'Neal was trying to negate the fact that Bryant has in fact won three titles.

Shaq is suggesting that Kobe is only a second-tier legend, more like a statistically impressive nonchamp (Charles Barkley, Dominique Wilkins, George Gervin) or a world-class, ring-wearing role player (Scottie Pippen, Kevin McHale). In the NBA, you cannot be truly transcendent unless you've: a) won a championship, and b) been the primary reason for your team's winning that championship. Shaq is attempting to rewrite history, trying to rebrand Bryant as a nonwinner. This kind of attack serves no purpose and offers no personal benefit, but he does it anyway. So what's his motive? There can be only one: hatred. He simply hates the guy.

This, I suspect, is what Shaq thinks about Kobe: You betrayed me. I tried to be cool with you, but you're not a real guy. You got yourself into trouble, and the first thing you did was bring up my name for no reason. Now my kids live somewhere else. When we played together, all you had to do was concede I was the focus of the team and let people make up their own minds about which of us was more important. But you made the Lakers choose between us, and you were younger and healthier, so they traded me to Miami. And that was embarrassing for me. So I'm going to embarrass you for the rest of your life. I am going to prey on your social insecurities and your need for appreciation. And I'm gonna do this because I hate you.

Kobe, of course, sees things differently. He probably thinks about Shaq like this: You know I'm better. You know it. And that should be the only thing that matters. And I know I told a reporter you were fat in 2003, and I'm sorry about that. But you were fat, and that made you less effective and injury-prone. I'm just being honest here. Basketball is not a game; it's a science. Why does personality have to matter? I realize I shouldn't have dropped your name to those cops, but I thought my life was over, and I panicked. Everyone seems to like you no matter how you act, so I tried to associate my behavior with yours. Besides, you don't seem particularly depressed about your wife's being gone. In fact, you seem to be having a great time making me look like a bozo. Why are you doing this? You have made it increasingly difficult for me to enjoy my own greatness. And I hate you for that.

George Bernard Shaw (who spent most of his adult life making random comments that writers could later use in magazine columns) once said that hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated. At least in this case, that seems pretty true. But which of these revenge-seekers is intimidated more? In the eyes of the public, there's no doubt O'Neal is winning this war. I wonder, though, if that actually means he has already lost. If Shaq honestly believes all the things he rapped about, would he need to say them? Probably not. Which is why this grudge doesn't get boring: Faced with the possibility of moving on and moving forward, neither of these guys can do it. What's more, they don't want to. It's part of who they are. They love it.

And the love is what true hate is.

[JumpinJack AJ]

It seems like this writer just wants 2 blow the situation up. Who cares? It's old.

[MaxFly]

It seems like this writer just wants 2 blow the situation up. Who cares? It's old.

I don't know if it's old; there are people out there who actually believe that Bryant's comments to the police in 2003 lead to Shaq's pending divorce in 2007... whether directly, indirectly, or by whatever means. It's a pretty new accusation and it doesn't seem to matter whether it's true or not, or whether it even makes sense... People have jumped on the bandwagon.

Edited August 7, 2008 by MaxFly

[VIsqo]

:iagree: :werd: