Kobe Bryant not in NBAs all-time top 10? Shaq

Shaquille O’Neal has an concern with a current rating of the all-time best NBA gamers.

On Monday, Bleacher Report launched its listing of the “top 100 NBA players ever,” primarily based on a compilation of rankings from a “legion of B/R NBA experts, writers and editors.”

O’Neal completed just exterior the top 5. He didn’t appear to have an concern with that.

Shaq’s beef was with the position of his former Lakers teammate, the late Kobe Bryant, who landed exterior of the top 10.

“Kobe at 11 is criminal,” O’Neal wrote on X in the feedback of a Bleacher Report post that revealed the listing’s top 20. He left his remark a little more than an hour after the unique Bleacher Report post went stay.

Here are the ten gamers ranked forward of Bryant, in order from the top: Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Bill Russell, O’Neal, Tim Duncan, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain and Stephen Curry.

Bryant is adopted on the listing by Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Durant, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West.

O’Neal has made no secret of his emotions on where Bryant ranks among the league’s all-time greats. In 2023, the Diesel advised The Times that his “first team” on such a listing can be himself, Bryant, Jordan, Johnson and James.

(Coming off the bench for O’Neal on that hypothetical staff had been Curry, Allen Iverson, Duncan, Karl Malone, Isiah Thomas and Abdul-Jabbar.)

Last month, in connection with the Netflix docuseries “Power Moves with Shaquille O’Neal,” Shaq revealed one other personal top 10 listing in which he ranked Bryant at No. 2, behind Jordan and just forward of James.

Bryant ranks fourth in all-time NBA scoring (33,643 factors) and his “Mamba Mentality” work ethic is still cited as a main affect on present athletes. He spent the first eight years of his profession as Lakers teammates with O’Neal, with L.A. profitable three NBA titles during that span.

Those Lakers also misplaced to the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 NBA Finals. Soon after, O’Neal was traded to the Miami Heat, with pressure between the 2 superstars seen as one of the primary causes for the transfer. O’Neal received one other NBA title with the Heat in 2006. Bryant received two more with the Lakers, in 2009 and 2010.

Over the years, O’Neal and Bryant acknowledged their rocky relationship as teammates but also insisted that they really had been close buddies.

“I just want people to know that I don’t hate you, I know you don’t hate me. I call it today a ‘work beef,’ is what we had,” O’Neal advised Bryant on “The Big Podcast with Shaq” in 2015.

“We had a lot of disagreements, we had a lot of arguments,” he mentioned later. “But I think it fueled us both.”

Years later, when it appeared their feud may be heating up again, the 2 NBA greats took to social media to nip that notion in the bud.

“Ain’t nothin but love there,” Bryant wrote of his relationship with O’Neal.

“It’s all good bro,” Shaq responded.

Bryant and his daughter Gianna had been among the 9 people who died in a Jan. 26, 2020, helicopter crash in Calabasas. O’Neal was one of the audio system at the Feb. 24, 2020, memorial service for “my friend, my little brother Kobe Bryant and my beautiful niece Gigi.”

“Kobe and I pushed one another to play some of the greatest basketball of all time and I am proud that no other team has accomplished what the three-peat Lakers have done since the Shaq and Kobe Lakers did it,” O’Neal mentioned. “And sometimes like immature kids, we argued, we fought, we bantered, we assaulted each other with offhand remarks on the field. Make no mistake, even when folks thought we were on bad terms, when the cameras are turned off, he and I would throw a wink at each other and say let’s go whoop some ass.

“We never took it seriously. In truth, Kobe and I always maintained a deep respect and a love for one another.”