It appears as if Shaquille O’Neal has been disproven by Adam Silver and the NBA. As many fans should certainly be aware, Shaq is a former NBA star and is currently a part of the basketball media. Members of the NBA community will have likely seen him on Inside the NBA, an ESPN show.
Considering that Shaq is quite an influential person, his words are always given some value. After all, O’Neal is a 4x NBA champion and is still widely regarded by many fans to be the most dominant force in the game of basketball.
Fans will know that the NBA tried out something new this season called the In-Season Tournament. Upon hearing about this tournament, Shaq had quite an interesting statement to make. That said, here’s more context and background to the situation.
Shaquille O’Neal’s claims about the NBA In-Season Tournament
Although fans will assume that everyone approved of the new midseason tournament brought about by Adam Silver, Shaq initially revealed that it was quite hard for him to understand the rules and value behind this new tournament when compared to a legitimate NBA title.
“No, because growing up watching you guys, you know watching Kareem, Magic, we only really cared about the one thing, The Larry…”
To those who might not understand, the NBA championship trophy is called the Larry O’Brien trophy. Since Shaquille O’Neal is from an era where players focused solely on winning titles or making all-star games, he found it difficult to understand why NBA stars would take the tournament seriously.However, O’Neal’s perspective does not appear to be shared by most of the basketball community. Recent reports reveal that the viewership ratings for the In-Season Tournament Finals averaged 4,580,000 viewers on ABC and ESPN2. That makes it one of the most-watched NBA games.
The first ever NBA In-Season Tournament Championship Game between the Lakers and Pacers averaged 4,580,000 viewers on ABC and ESPN2 📺
That’s the most-watched non-Christmas NBA game during the regular season in nearly 6 years 📈
(via @Ben_ESPN) pic.twitter.com/MacA1xR561
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) December 12, 2023
One could argue that the financial incentive of $500,000 greatly motivated the 30 teams from across the league to give their best attempt towards winning the tournament. Since the viewership ratings were quite high and helped in the increase of revenue for the NBA, fans might just see the IST become an established part of the season in the future.
