Shaq Says Kevin Durant Isn’t Allowed to Criticize Him Until He Wins a Ring

Shaq is still upset about Kevin Durant trying to get involved in his ongoing beef with KD's teammate JaVale McGee.

It’s been almost two weeks now since Shaquille O’Neal went at Kevin Durant on Twitter after KD tried to stick up for his Warriors teammate JaVale McGee during his ongoing beef with Shaq. KD came to McGee’s defense after Shaq included him in a Shaqtin’ A Fool segment on TNT’s Inside the NBA, and Shaq responded by telling KD to "mind yo business."

Shaq has since said that he’s no longer going to engage in a war of words with McGee. Shaq’s mom actually asked him to stop, and Shaq said that he would. But during an interview with Sports Illustrated on Thursday, Shaq was asked specifically about KD’s involvement in the beef, and he didn’t shy away from taking a shot at him. Shaq said he told KD to mind his business because he doesn’t think KD should be allowed to criticize him. According to Shaq, he needs to win a ring before he’s allowed to go to war with the big man.

"KD doesn’t have G-14 Classification," Shaq told SI. "He can’t talk to me like that. He may think he does, and he’s sticking up for his teammate. He’s a great player, but you ain’t in the club yet. You’re on the outside in line with [Charles] Barkley, [Karl] Malone, and [John] Stockton. You’re not in the club with me and those [championship] guys. That’s why I tweeted him, 'Mind ya business.'"

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Shaq then went on to compare KD to LeBron, who does have three rings to his name. "LeBron has a lot of clearance because he’s won championships," he said. "But when a guy who hasn’t won championships makes comments, you say, 'How do you know?'…[Durant] was just trying to stick up for his teammate. If you read into what he said, none of his sh*t made sense. Well, actually, some of it made sense. He said I was strong and I bullied people. Of course, that’s exactly what I did."

And Shaq finished his anti-KD thoughts by saying that, in general, he thinks today’s players are too "soft." According to Shaq, he never would have responded to criticism from someone of his stature when he was in the league. "Just put it this way: The league is soft and these guys are sensitive, period," he said. "I was sensitive [as a player] too, but I never went back at [older players]. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain never said sh*t to [support] me. Did I cry about it? No. Kareem said in the paper one time, when they asked him, 'Shaq is doing great, he has numbers similar to yours, what do you think?' His response was, 'Well, he hasn’t won a championship yet.' I could have gone back at him, but I didn’t. I sucked it up like a real man and was like, 'OK, watch this.' A lot of these guys, these days, when you say something about them, they start whimpering and crying."

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This isn’t the first time Shaq has made comments like this about guys who haven’t won titles. But it seems weird for him to take shots at KD for simply defending his teammate. If you want to read more about what he had to say about the whole McGee/KD situation, go here. He also took some shots at Mark Cuban and said he needs to stop being sensitive, too. We’d imagine McGee and KD have had enough of Shaq at this point, but we wouldn’t be shocked to see Cuban respond soon.

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