Shaq’s third album hitting streaming services comes with a huge unreleased collaboration between two rap legends.
Former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal’s third rap album You Can’t Stop The Reign is finally coming to digital streaming platforms on Friday, and there’s a fascinating twist involved with the release.
Per Fake Shore Drive’s Andrew Barber, the streaming debut will feature the previously unreleased version of the song “No Love Lost” that features both Jay-Z and Nas on their first-ever collaboration together at the time.
The studio version of the 1996 rap song originally featured Jay-Z and Lord Tariq alongside Shaq instead of Jay-Z and Nas, as the highly publicized feud between Jay-Z and Nas would’ve prevented a collaboration between the two.
However, it’s been nearly two decades since the two rap legends called their beef off, making their original first collaboration a possibility for release.
Shaq’s third album ‘You Can’t Stop The Reign’ FINALLY comes to DSPs this Friday, June 28th…
And for the first time ever, the previously unreleased original version of “No Love Lost” featuring both Nas & Jay-Z will be included (their first-ever collab) 🌧️🌧️🌧️ pic.twitter.com/hPncEqP7uR
While the 2024 NBA Draft is easily the marquee event of the week for basketball, the streaming debut of a Shaq album that features an unreleased collaboration of Nas and Jay-Z in their primes is pretty awesome.
Later this week, a select group of young basketball players will have their dreams realized when they are selected in the NBA draft. That won’t include any Notre Dame players this time around, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look back on those who have been picked. Among those is [autotag]LaPhonso Ellis[/autotag], who was picked fifth overall by the Denver Nuggets in 1992:
June 24, 1992: With the fifth pick in the NBA Draft, the Denver Nuggets select LaPhonso Ellis from the University of Notre Dame. pic.twitter.com/PuW0dRpELt
You’ll notice a clip a lot of credit for Ellis’ growth in his final season for the Irish is given to [autotag]John MacLeod[/autotag], who had just taken over for [autotag]Digger Phelps[/autotag]. You’ll also notice the graphic indicated that Ellis joined [autotag]Tom Hawkins[/autotag], [autotag]Walter Sahn[/autotag] and [autotag]Robert Whitmore[/autotag] in the program’s 1,000-point/1,000 rebound club. Only [autotag]Luke Harangody[/autotag] has joined in the years since.
Ellis flourished in his first of 11 NBA seasons, making the All-Rookie First Team alongside Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Christian Laettner and Tom Gugliotta. He started every game for the Nuggets, averaging 14.7 points a game and career highs of 9.1 rebounds and 1.4 blocks a game.
Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes, and opinions.
So far, none of it has worked. The Celtics are still up 2-0 in the series and playing excellent team basketball. Boston has managed to sustain one of the best runs to the Finals that we’ve ever seen.
Yet, still, Shaquille O’Neal is out here trying to deliver advice on preserving team chemistry to Brown.
Shortly after the Celtics won Game 2, Brown sat down for a postgame interview with Shaq, Grant Hill and the rest of the NBA TV crew. Shaq tried to deliver some sage advice to Brown but it honestly just ended up being extremely confusing.
.@Shaq: “Do not get fixated on useless titles. … It ain’t time for all that right now. Do what you gotta do and get it done.”@MattWinerTV: “That made sense to you?!”
“Do not get fixated on useless titles. Do what you got to do. Doesn’t matter who’s who or they say who’s what. It ain’t time for all that right now. Do what you’ve got to do. Get it done,” Shaq told Brown.
“I understand. Yes sir,” Brown said back. Then Matt Winer asked him, “That made sense to you?” To which Brown simply responded “No.”
You can’t help but laugh right there. Because who did that make sense to?!? Like, Shaq. Bro. I appreciate the effort there. But come on, my guy.
After that, Shaq clarified it: “They’re trying to separate you and your guy by saying who’s better. I’m saying don’t worry about useless titles. Who’s the man? It don’t matter who the man is. Kobe’s the man. Shaq’s the man. It don’t matter. I’m getting my 40. Kobe getting his 39. Let’s go get these championships.”
That’s MUCH better, Shaq. Thank you. We all get it now.
NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, one of the best big men to ever play the game, also had some special praise for Bill Walton.
While their relationship wasn’t the best over the years, O’Neal called him one of the “forefathers” and included Walton in the same realm as Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
"We definitely lost one of the Four Fathers of The Big Man Alliance."
“We definitely lost one of the forefathers of the big man alliance…Bill and I had an up-and-down relationship…It was up and down because I was sensitive…If you wanna become a legend, shouldn’t you listen to a legend?”
Shaq naming Walton with players such as those shows how good of a player he was, and it’s a special tribute from the legendary big man.
A look at the 2000-01 Lakers, who went from a potential one-hit wonder to a budding dynasty.
Over a span of several decades, the Los Angeles Lakers became the gold standard of basketball by winning championship after championship. They did so with a formula that consisted of transcendent leaders, star players, selfless supporting contributors and a healthy team concept.
The Lakers are one of very few teams in sports that have had multiple dynasties. They had one in their embryonic years in Minneapolis, one during the Showtime era of the 1980s and yet another one in the first decade of the 21st century. As such, not every one of their championship teams can be put on a top 10 list.
We continue our ranking of the 10 greatest Lakers teams to win it all with one that turned a memorable team into one that established a dynasty.
Going For Bigger and Better Things
In 2000, the Lakers won their first NBA championship in a dozen years behind the talents of Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and head coach Phil Jackson. Given the relative youth of their dynamic duo, they were expected to add more rings in the years to come.
O’Neal has been widely criticized in the late 1990s for never coming close to winning it all. In five of his six previous postseason appearances, his teams had gotten swept, and it led to plenty of people seeing him as a loser who lacked commitment.
He decided to take it easy during the summer of 2000 and bask in the glow of finally being a world champion. Bryant, on the other hand, saw the 2000 title as a mere stepping stone to more, and he worked like a madman in order to become an even greater player.
The results became apparent as the 2000-01 season started. O’Neal’s offensive numbers were way down in the first two months of the season, and his free throw accuracy, which had always been a problem, fell under 40%, which was flat-out embarrassing.
Meanwhile, Bryant came out with a vengeance. He had been great the previous season, but he was hell-bent on becoming the game’s best player, or at least its best non-big man.
He averaged 27.8 points a game in November and was very aggressive offensively. After struggling initially to maintain efficiency, he found it in December while putting up several monster performances and averaging 32.3 points per contest that month.
But O’Neal had a problem because he wasn’t getting the ball as much. He started blaming Bryant’s quest for self-actualization for the team’s disappointing record (23-10 through Jan. 3), and fans and the media fell for it. Very quickly, article after article came out, most of which were slanderous, accusing Bryant of being selfish, arrogant and self-indulgent.
As the winter progressed, L.A. struggled to generate any type of momentum, and it looked like the team would become one of the many that failed to win back-to-back titles.
Things Fall Into Place
After a dismal April 1 loss to the New York Knicks in which they scored just 78 points, the Lakers had a 48-26 record, and it simply looked like it wasn’t their year.
They then took off on a four-game road trip with their schedule winding down as Bryant remained home to recover from an ankle injury that had been hindering him for several weeks. O’Neal averaged 35.8 points a game, and he was starting to defend and rebound with the intensity he consistently displayed the previous season.
Los Angeles won all four of those contests, and it won each of its four remaining games at home right afterward to give it an eight-game winning streak to end the regular season. Bryant returned for those final four home games, and while he put up sizable scoring numbers, he was looking to get his teammates involved more than he had that season.
Yet despite a 56-26 record and second-place finish in the Western Conference, the Lakers seemed to face a gauntlet in the playoffs. They would have to defeat three teams that won at least 50 games just to return to the NBA Finals. One of those teams was the San Antonio Spurs, who they had avoided during the 2000 postseason after Tim Duncan got hurt. Duncan was now healthy, and the Spurs held the best regular season record in the league.
Instead, the Purple and Gold would be a gauntlet themselves that spring and summer.
They swept the Portland Trail Blazers, the same team that almost knocked them out in Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals, in the first round. They then swept an emerging and dangerous Sacramento Kings squad in the second round, as Bryant piled on 48 points and 16 rebounds in Game 4.
Los Angeles then took on the Spurs in a Western Conference Finals matchup that was expected to be a battle royale. But Bryant remained in volcano mode, going for 45 points in an easy Game 1 win. That was when O’Neal memorably called Bryant “his idol” and said the guard was the best player in the game.
Yet another sweep took place, with the team winning Game 3 and Game 4 by a combined 68 points. Los Angeles simply seemed unbeatable.
The Philadelphia 76ers, its opponent in the NBA Finals, was able to steal Game 1 at Staples Center. But they then lost the next four games, giving the Lakers back-to-back world championships and a then-record 15-1 postseason record.
O’Neal won his second straight finals MVP by averaging 33.0 points, 15.8 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 3.4 blocks a game versus the Sixers while being guarded by Dikembe Mutombo, who was that season’s Defensive Player of the Year.
It was a storybook ending for the franchise that is always associated with Hollywood. But in the end, there wasn’t much that was Hollywood-like about the Lakers. They were now harmonious, focused and hard-working, and it seemed nothing would stop them in the foreseeable future.
On a recent episode of his podcast, Shaquille O’Neal downplayed the tension between him and Kobe Bryant when the two were Lakers teammates.
Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant were one of the most successful yet contentious partnerships in NBA history. Together, they won three straight NBA championships on the Los Angeles Lakers in the early 2000s, but there was clearly tension between the two.
Both wanted to get theirs offensively and be the alpha dog, but O’Neal was always reluctant to let Bryant rise to the level he was destined to get to. It led to their nasty breakup in 2004. Since then, many have talked about them not in terms of what they accomplished together, but what they could’ve accomplished together in subsequent years had they remained teammates.
Prior to and after their breakup, the two, particularly O’Neal, had harsh words for each other. But in a recent episode of his podcast “The Big Podcast,” O’Neal denied there was ever any feud between him and the Black Mamba.
"The respect has to always be there. We don't see eye-to-eye. But it ain't a feud. It just looks like a feud… When I'm getting doubled, he's the first dude I'm looking for."
After some time had passed after his breakup with Bryant, O’Neal started to publicly defend the late Lakers legend and sing his praises publicly. It has been a beautiful thing to witness, as it was nearly unimaginable back in 2004, when the two were seemingly at each other’s throats.
Shaq did a wonderful job paying tribute to the late Bill Walton.
During coverage of the 2024 Western conference finals, Shaquille O’Neal delivered a very moving tribute to the late Bill Walton by honoring him as a league legend.
After all, Walton helped pave the way for big men like Shaq to dominate in the NBA. The NBA great honored Walton by saying that “we definitely lost one of the Four Fathers of The Big Man Alliance.”
That’s pretty awesome for Shaq to recognize Walton like this, as a great recognized a great in such a meaningful way.
"We definitely lost one of the Four Fathers of The Big Man Alliance."
The Warriors’ Draymond Green spelled out exactly why Kobe Bryant keeps getting disrespected in the greatest of all time debates.
When basketball fans debate who is the greatest player in NBA history, it usually comes down to two people: Michael Jordan and LeBron James.
For years, it seemed as if Jordan was the consensus winner of that debate, but in recent times, James has gradually gained more and more support.
At the same time, there are a few who have pointed out the late Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant is never mentioned in such debates despite being recognized as one of the greatest ever and an absolute icon of the game.
On his podcast “The Big Podcast,” Bryant’s former Lakers superstar teammate Shaquille O’Neal asked Draymond Green why Bryant isn’t in the greatest of all time debate. Green said Bryant should be in the conversation, and he gave a very thoughtful and truthful explanation about why the Hall of Famer isn’t (at 34:18).
“Here’s why I think he’s not (in the conversation),” Green said. “Because, No. 1, he played with you and people hold that against him. No. 2, I think Kobe kind of fell in a weird time. And what I mean by that is Mike (Michael Jordan) left the league. When Mike left the league, y’all were dominating. And then you left the Lakers. When you left the Lakers, they had a few rough years, it wasn’t great.
“… They didn’t have great roster. Rudy Tomjanovich, that was that was an epic fail, like it just wasn’t great. And while it wasn’t going great, there was a young guy in Cleveland starting to make his hay. And so, in the years where Kob could have been dominating, which he was from a number’s standpoint, but they weren’t winning. In those years, Bron (James) was making his hay and starting to make his name, and is he the best player.”
O’Neal then said that he agreed with Green’s assessment and that he would like to hear Bryant’s name put in that conversation.
When Jordan retired from the Chicago Bulls in 1999, O’Neal took over as the league’s most dominant player. By the 2000-01 season, Bryant was being called the best all-around player by people around the league, but he also became widely hated because of his perceived dourness and egotism, as well as his feud with O’Neal.
The two superstars won three straight NBA championships from 2000 to 2002, but O’Neal received the lion’s share of the credit. There is still a lingering misperception that Bryant merely rode O’Neal’s coattails and that L.A. would’ve been just as successful with any other All-Star guard in his place.
When James stormed into the league in 2003, the media instantly pushed the narrative that he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, even as his Cleveland Cavaliers teams didn’t come close to winning it all year after year. Even though Bryant upped his game after O’Neal left the Lakers in 2004 and eventually continued to win championships, many refused to give him his due.
These debates come down to much more than numbers. The raw numbers and analytics alone strongly favor James over Bryant, but many purists and students of the game will point out how clutch Bryant was and the fact that he needed to win in order to be OK with himself.
It is up for debate whether Bryant or James is the better player. But Bryant absolutely belongs on the highest pantheon of NBA greats alongside Jordan, James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, even if he was the worst player in that group.
Shaquille O’Neal and Draymond Green got into a debate about who would win a matchup between two of the greatest teams in recent years.
Perhaps the two greatest NBA teams of the 21st century so far have been the early 2000s Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors from several years ago.
Both squads won multiple world championships in succession, and, of course, those Lakers took home three Larry O’Brien Trophies in a row from 2000 to 2002.
Many have compared those early 2000s Lakers teams to other great squads that came before and after them. Shaquille O’Neal, who led them along with Kobe Bryant, engaged in a spirited debate with Draymond Green while on “The Big Podcast” about which team would win in a hypothetical matchup between O’Neal’s Lakers and Green’s Warriors (at 26:57).
While Green admitted no one on his team could’ve guarded O’Neal, he did outline a defensive scheme they could’ve used to play ball denial against the dominant center. That scheme would consist of Green fronting O’Neal just outside of the paint and Andrew Bogut guarding O’Neal from behind.
O’Neal pointed out that the 2000 Portland Trail Blazers, as well as the Sacramento Kings, employed that type of scheme. But Green believes it would’ve been more effective with him, something that O’Neal didn’t want to hear.
The Hall of Fame center then asked Green who would guard Bryant, and Green said Klay Thompson, who was a strong defender prior to his ACL and Achilles injuries. O’Neal responded with an awkward silence.
Such a matchup would be a contrast of styles. O’Neal’s Lakers played slowdown basketball, while the Warriors popularized modern-day up-tempo, pace-and-space basketball.
Perhaps it would at least somewhat resemble the 2002 Western Conference finals, in which Los Angeles barely beat a Kings team that was the first to play today’s variety of fast, 3-point heavy ball.
“Music and sports have always been intertwined and probably always will be.”
Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith had no idea what was coming next. Neither did Charles Barkley and Ernie Johnson, though neither would have recognized it even if they did.
As TNT’s Inside the NBA welcomed fans to halftime between the Mavericks and Clippers on May 1, the hosts of the beloved basketball talk show were met with a clip from “Euphoria” by rapper Kendrick Lamar, which was perhaps the most vicious of Lamar’s many diss tracks against Drake.
Johnson, unaware of the context of the music, introduced his co-hosts as the song continued to play. It took some time for Smith to realize what was happening but once he did, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Why y’all putting us in the middle of the rap beef, man?” Smith said on the broadcast. “Come on, man!”
Once he caught on, O’Neal laughed wholeheartedly at the absurdity of the situation. Barkley looked disgruntled and couldn’t believe “grown [expletive] men” would involve themselves in such petty drama as a rap beef. Johnson tried his darnedest to bring it back home and get the crew to talk about basketball, asking his co-hosts about the Mavericks to no avail.
Clever audio programming like this has become one of the many secret ingredients that leads to the continued success of Inside the NBA. Music is typically the first part of the halftime studio show and sets up whatever the crew is going to talk about for the next 15 minutes. None of this happens by accident.
“We’re just trying to throw as much stuff in front of Shaq, Charles, Kenny and Ernie that’s going to get a reaction out of them,” Keith Robinson, a TNT Sports studio producer for Inside the NBA, told For The Win. “It created a moment.”
Within seconds, fans on the internet went wild for the “Euphoria” clip. It was especially captivating because the song had only been released the previous day. The “Euphoria” lead-in was also a perfect encapsulation of the show that has aired since 1989, which has now spanned more than a decade with this unique cast of characters.
Robinson works directly alongside Donzell Floyd, a senior associate producer and director for TNT Sports, on these choices.
“Every now and then, our talent will have input but very rarely will they know what song is coming in,” Floyd said. “That’s why you saw the reaction you saw when we played the Kendrick record. They had no idea. They usually don’t know.”
For example, they knew when they played Kendrick Lamar, it could have gone one of several ways. That includes the cast potentially not even hearing it or having any reaction whatsoever.
“Or maybe Shaq is going to hear it and jump up and do something that is so crazy that it’s going to have to make us play an extra minute or a minute and a half,” Floyd said. “All of those things are on the table at that point.”
Multiple record labels have reached out to the folks at TNT Sports with a list of new releases they can potentially play on the broadcast.
It isn’t just the studio show that uses music to keep the audience engaged, though. During games on TNT’s broadcast, associate producer Erron Banks is also intentional with his music decisions.
Banks picks between 12-to-15 pre-cut songs when he is fading in music on the game broadcast. For the studio show, meanwhile, Floyd said that he will actually have somewhere between 60-to-100 songs queued up at any given moment.
TNT is under an ephemeral clause, which means they are allowed a courtesy one-time use only. When the game does re-air, they substitute their TNT theme music where those songs played.
TNT Sports
Whether it’s something as obscure as “Game Over” by Houston rapper Lil’ Flip during a Rockets victory or a popular throwback like nWo’s Wolfpac theme during a Timberwolves win, these choices can lead to viral moments online as well.
“Sometimes we have played music like Lil’ Flip and I haven’t thought of him in ages and we’ll see he’s trending on Twitter because people are tagging him that he was on NBA on TNT.” Robinson said. “I always wonder what guys like Lil’ Flip are thinking of when that happens. Did he even hear it or see it himself? Why am I trending right now?”
Music is genuinely one of the characters on TNT for the live broadcast and the studio shows. But if people are starting to notice that more now, that’s only because there are more people tuning in this time of year.
“It’s basically a part of the show just as much as we show fan tweets and posts talking about the guys, the music is a part of our overall coverage,” Robinson said “It’s just amplified now because people are watching the playoffs and more eyes are tuned in.”
“Music and sports have always been intertwined and probably always will be,” Floyd added. “It feels like it may be a little bigger recently but we have been doing music for years now because it’s a part of our DNA at this point.”
The cast will sometimes sing songs when they’re creating a mood on the set, even when they’re not on the air. But while the reactions are often beautifully spontaneous and improvised, the audio programming is not.
“It’s not just to play music,” Robinson said. “It’s all thoughtful and looking for the right moment for the right song at that moment to not only have an impact with the guys in the studio but for stuff to catch online.”
Inside the NBA producers are often thinking of location and demographic for the game they are assigned when they make their needle drops. Perhaps the halftime highlights lead with Anthony Edwards, then TNT may choose a musician from Edwards’ hometown of Atlanta.
Or if the game is in Indianapolis, Floyd is likely to have his headphones on midway through the second quarter to find the perfect track to play at the break. Even if people do not realize TNT chose to play Babyface during a Pacers game because the rapper is from Indiana, there was an intentionality to the process.
“It depends on where we are and then I start digging through the crates,” Floyd said.
Last season, for example, they had a Warriors game in the Bay Area and used it as an excuse to play Oakland-native MC Hammer.
O’Neal heard the song and brilliantly challenged Barkley to do MC Hammer’s typewriter dance, which immediately derailed all attempts at analysis for the remainder of the segment.
It wasn’t ideal to spark high-level basketball analysis but it was wildly entertaining for fans.
Similarly, a few years ago, the crew was providing halftime analysis when the Heat played the Bucks. The studio played Rick Ross because he is from Miami and O’Neal had a joking moment with Johnson, assuming he didn’t know who that was.
Johnson correctly identified the song as one by “The Boss” Rick Ross and hilariously shouted out “M.I. Yayo”, a signature catchphrase of the rapper. It is all a part of the magic that keeps this show so engaging.
“That’s just another way to have fun with them and give the audience a peek behind the curtain with not just basketball but part of the culture,” Robinson said.
Even though the future of TNT’s NBA rights are up in the air, it is this sort of careful attention to detail that makes Inside the NBA such a defining part of the basketball ethos.
“We have the best show going and we’re going to continue to do what we do.” Floyd said. “We hope that it impacts and affects someone and it makes your day feel that much better because we’re in the business of entertainment.”
