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Sports

Is Shaq the Worst? Or Just Kind of the Worst?

Is the former NBA superstar and leading man of "Kazaam" really that bad at being himself?

Shaquille O'Neal is seven feet tall, the most imposing physical specimen in basketball history (sorry, LeBron James and George Mikan), as well as at least the second worst ex-player doing media work in basketball today. (He'd be firmly the worst if Reggie Miller weren't so consistently awful.)

Allegation: He never cashed an NBA paycheck.
According to an old profile piece—I think it was in GQ, though it may have been Boy's Life, I’m too lazy to check—O'Neal never spent any of the money he made from his day job of dunking, living instead off endorsement contracts from Pepsi, Double Stuff Oreos, Burger King, Radio Shaq, Reebok (for a second), Taco Bell (also for a second), and, presumably, whatever LSU paid him to attend college. Putting entire paychecks into savings would have been an impressive accomplishment if he, say, worked hard at his job, but he stayed missing free-throws and, worse, apparently didn’t care about making free throws. Seeing the money he made could have given him motivation to do his real job, which was most people’s absolute dream job.

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Verdict: Worst

Allegation: A sub-par secondary career in film and music.
Folks like to poke fun at Kazaam, as they should, since its laserdisc sales have stalled and the movie itself wasn't very good to begin with. Still, there's nothing wrong with an athlete starring in a children's movie, or even a movie aimed at adults with the brains of children (that would be Blue Chips). In fact, young Shaq kind of worked well as a children’s movie star: As a kid he played hoops, as an adult, the same. Why pretend he’s grown up? As for his music career, Fu-Schnickens is phat, "Biological Didn't Bother" is phatter, and anything 90s-related going through a renaissance these days, so let’s not treat the retro hits of tomorrow too harshly. It’s true Shaq left Orlando partly for his movie career, but it's not like he could have been a valet in LA Confidential; what he did is the best he could have done. Also, great scene in Kazaam when he hunts that nun with a crossbow.

Verdict: Fine

Allegation: He destroyed the Phoenix Suns.
The NBA in 2007 was a beautiful thing, slightly cooler than it is now, and those Suns teams, until they got Shaq, were perhaps the most beautiful. While it's not Shaq's fault he came he could have at least, I don’t know, been able to run, and not totally torpedo the team and Steve Nash's career. (He may have been bitter Nash won the 2006 MVP instead of him, and said something to that effect in February. That doesn’t excuse stealing Nash's reality show idea though.) A valley in a basketball career full of them.

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Verdict: Worst

Allegation: He's fat.
Being fat is cool, especially in America and especially when you're an athlete. You know those long, boring basketball games that are exhausting to watch? It’s easy to forget from the couch, but players have been running around the whole time. That’s like four hours! Christ. Shaq, theoretically, ran around during these games and probably even more in practice. And yet he still somehow was always fat. He added unwanted pounds to a 7-foot frame! That’s like 25,000 calories a day! How is it possible? It might be his most impressive physical accomplishment, and his mass allowed him to break a backboard (more on that later).

Verdict: Fine

Allegation: TV crimes against humanity.
Look, journalists liked Shaq as a player: He was around, he’d make up stupid nicknames, and also happened to be a hell of a player, and at his finest he was like a 1960s prize fighter: Big dude, sitting on a cushion, telling the little guys how it is in slang they don’t understand. Still, he’s as corny as any athlete: He used to be a sheriff, and there’s the Van Gundy stuff, and the stealing-Nash’s-show shit, and so on. While it's no surprise he landed with TNT, the home of the NBA—seriously, what else is on TNT?—it’s also no surprise he's been abjectly and incredibly horrible. He spent most of last night’s broadcast staring into space and critiquing Charles Barkley's wardrobe. In other words, he gets paid probably millions of dollars to do something most people do for free when they’re watching TNT.

Verdict: Worst

Allegation: He broke a backboard.
Yes, Shaq sucks now, yes, he started @The_Real_Insertscreennamehere thing and yes, he is a fucking volunteer sheriff. (A deposed one!) But he also did this. It's the best play in NBA history and maybe sports history, a showcase of brute force that makes Bo Jackson running over Brian Bosworth look like a Promise Ring concert. He could grow a goatee or endorse Mitt Romney and he'd still have that moment in his back pocket.

Verdict: He's the man. Now let us never speak of Shaq again.

@samreiss_