Shaq Slams LeBron James For Whining Over NBA Schedule And Injured Players

Shaquille O’Neal is tired of LeBron’s James complaining about the NBA schedule. LeBron recently whined about the busy playing schedule this season and how that caused injuries which disappointed fans. 

The Lakers were eliminated in the first round of the NBA playoffs by the Phoenix Suns. LeBron played on a right ankle that hadn’t healed from a sprain in mid-March. He missed 26 of the 30 regular-season games.

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LeBron Claims NBA Season Isn’t Fair

LeBron actually started complaining about the season at the beginning of training camp in December. He was concerned by how quickly the league transitioned form playing in Orlando to the condensed 72-game season schedule.

He continued his whining with these recent tweets:

“They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season. I knew exactly what would happen. I only wanted to protect the well being of the players which ultimately is the PRODUCT & BENEFIT of OUR GAME! These injuries isn’t just “PART OF THE GAME”. It’s the lack of PURE RIM REST rest before starting back up. 8, possibly 9 ALL-STARS has missed Playoff games(most in league history). This is the best time of the year for our league and fans but missing a ton of our fav players. It’s insane. If there’s one person that know about the body and how it works all year round it’s ME! I speak for the health of all our players and I hate to see this many injuries this time of the year. Sorry fans wish you guys were seeing all your fav guys right now.”

Shaq Responds To LeBron

LeBron gets paid a tremendous amount of money to dribble a ball.

In the real world, we don’t get breaks. Even many manual laborers don’t get weeks-long or months-long breaks. 

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Shaq understands this and he took Lebron James to task for it during an interview with CNBC. 

“When you’re living in a world where 40 million people have been laid off and I’m making $200 million, you won’t get no complaining from me,” Shaq said. “I’d play back to back to back to back to back,” he added.

“I’m not knocking what anybody said, but me personally, I don’t complain and make excuses, because real people are working their tail off and all we gotta do is train two hours a day and then play a game for two hours at night and make a lot of money … So my thought process is a little different,” Shaq continues.

You can watch Shaquille O’Neal discuss this in the CNBC video below. 

NBA spokesman Mike Bass also responded to James’ tweets. He noted that injury rates this season were about the same as they were during the 2019-2020 season. And, that starter-level and All-Star players who missed game because of being injured were at similar rates to the last three seasons. 

“While injuries are an unfortunate reality of our game, we recognize the enormous sacrifices NBA players and teams have made to play through this pandemic,” he continued.

LeBron had one final tweet about the matter (so far).

Obviously, the league is better when players aren’t sidelined with injuries. But, LeBron James is just looking for something to rant about. And, in this instance, Shaquille O’Neal didn’t want to hear his complaining.