Shaquille O’Neal was one of the many national NBA commentators to call out Ben Simmons for not attempting to play late in the Brooklyn Nets’ season, calling Simmons’ behavior a “punk move.”
“Listen, if you’re not ready to play, you would get more respect from the people if you just say ‘I’m not ready to play.’ And don’t say nothing else,” O’Neal said ahead of Game 4 of the Nets-Celtics series. “Don’t be shooting and saying ‘I’m coming back; I’m going to do this.’ That was a punk move.”
Once it was announced that Simmons would undergo offseason back surgery, the Nets star retweeted a video arguing that people like Shaq and Stephen A. Smith owed Simmons an apology.
In a conversation with Taylor Rooks, O’Neal said that Simmons should call him if the Nets star believes he was wronged, but Shaq also stood behind his take on Simmons, noting that he has people close to the situation in Brooklyn.
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“When you leave people room to speculate, everybody going to make their own speculation. If I said something that was hurtful, maybe he should call me and say ‘hey, you said this.’
And then I will, I’m intelligent enough to stop time and say ‘OK, when did I say it…. you know what, that wasn’t right. My bad, big homie.’ But right now we’re just going off speculation, and some facts, because I’ve got people where he is. So I know a lot and I see a lot. He hasn’t said why he wasn’t, why he’s not playing.”
"If I said something that was hurtful, maybe he should call me.”@SHAQ opens up about his comments toward Ben Simmons pic.twitter.com/JTUm7X00dS
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 10, 2022
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