Shaquille O'Neal claims Jordan, Hakeem and Bird would get swept against him, Kobe, and LeBron: "IN A SEVEN GAME SERIES THEY GET SWEPT"
Shaquille O'Neal has always claimed that he’s one of basketball’s most dominant players alongside Wilt Chamberlain. He’s also now asserting that with Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, they’ll sweep Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Hakeem Olajuwon.
Shaq posted this on his Instagram account about a hypothetical 3-on3 match against fellow legends of the game:
“yes i said it and in all caps IN A SEVEN GANE SERIEA THEY GET SWEPT.”
Shaquille O'Neal might have misspelled a few of the words in his post but there’s no mistaking the bold assertion. He does not believe Jordan, Bird and Olajuwon can win a single game against a trio that has himself, Bryant and James.
Hypothetical matchups are always hard to predict as there are just so many variables and players are usually from different eras. Larry Bird was one of the biggest stars of the ‘80s alongside LA Lakers icon Magic Johnson.
Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon were part of the historically great 1984 NBA draft class and won championships in the ‘90s.
Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James dominated the NBA after the aforementioned names had already retired. MJ, “Larry Legend” and “The Dream” didn’t even get to play a single game against “King James.”
The only time Shaq won a playoff series against Jordan’s Bulls was during the 1995 postseason when “His Airness” came out of retirement. O’Neal led his young Orlando Magic team to the NBA Finals, only to be swept by Hakeem Olajuwon’s Houston Rockets.
On this date in 1995, the Rockets rallied after being down 20 pts in the 1st half to beat the Magic, 120-118 in OT, in Game 1 of the '95 NBA Finals.
The Rockets went on to sweep the series to claim their 2nd straight NBA Championship. https://t.co/KbeAE1kYfH
Jordan would get his revenge the following year against Shaquille O'Neal and the Orlando Magic by sweeping them in 1996. The Shaq and Kobe Lakers blossomed a few years after MJ called it a career.
Some have agreed with O’Neal’s claim of a sweep against Jordan, Bird and Olajuwon, but several have also turned the tables on him. They have commented that it would be Jordan’s team that will do the sweeping instead of the other way around.
Shaquille O'Neal calls Michael Jordan the greatest ever
Shaquille O'Neal may believe that he will sweep Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Hakeem Olajuwon against his team, but Shaq still considers MJ the greatest.
Here’s what O’Neal said in an interview a few months ago about Jordan:
(3:50 mark)
"Michael Jordan is the best ever. I grew up watching karate movies so the basis of every karate movie that I watched, at some point the young student must kill the master to become the master.
"So Mike's the master and everybody knew in order to get to the finals you gotta get past Mike and I was the last one to accomplish that."
The loss to Shaq’s Orlando Magic team in 1995 was the last time Michael Jordan would lose in the playoffs. He would cap off his Chicago Bulls career with another three-peat. Among his victims in 1996 was O’Neal’s Magic which the Bulls dismissed via a shutout.
Even with LeBron James’ inevitable march to claim Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring crown, Shaq still puts Jordan on top of James as the GOAT.