{"id":65625,"date":"2025-07-14T19:12:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T19:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/65625\/"},"modified":"2025-07-14T19:12:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T19:12:10","slug":"kobe-bryant-not-in-nbas-all-time-top-10-shaq-thinks-its-criminal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/65625\/","title":{"rendered":"Kobe Bryant not in NBA’s all-time top 10? Shaq thinks it’s ‘criminal’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Shaquille O\u2019Neal<\/a> has an issue with a recent ranking of the all-time best NBA players.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Bleacher Report released its list of the \u201ctop 100 NBA players ever<\/a>,\u201d based on a compilation of rankings from a \u201clegion of B\/R NBA experts, writers and editors.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neal finished just outside the top five. He didn\u2019t seem to have an issue with that.<\/p>\n

Shaq\u2019s beef was with the placement of his former Lakers teammate, the late Kobe Bryant<\/a>, who landed outside of the top 10.<\/p>\n

\u201cKobe at 11 is criminal,\u201d O\u2019Neal wrote on X<\/a> in the comments of a Bleacher Report post that revealed the list\u2019s top 20. He left his comment a little more than an hour after the original Bleacher Report post went live.<\/p>\n

Here are the 10 players ranked ahead of Bryant, in order from the top: Michael Jordan<\/a>, LeBron James<\/a>, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar<\/a>, Magic Johnson<\/a>, Bill Russell<\/a>, O\u2019Neal, Tim Duncan<\/a>, Larry Bird<\/a>, Wilt Chamberlain<\/a> and Stephen Curry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bryant is followed on the list by Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Durant, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neal has made no secret of his feelings on where Bryant ranks among the league\u2019s all-time greats. In 2023, the Diesel told The Times<\/a> that his \u201cfirst team\u201d on such a list would be himself, Bryant, Jordan, Johnson and James. <\/p>\n

(Coming off the bench for O\u2019Neal on that hypothetical team were Curry, Allen Iverson, Duncan, Karl Malone, Isiah Thomas and Abdul-Jabbar.)<\/p>\n

Last month, in connection with the Netflix docuseries \u201cPower Moves with Shaquille O\u2019Neal,\u201d Shaq revealed another personal top 10 list<\/a> in which he ranked Bryant at No. 2, behind Jordan and just ahead of James.<\/p>\n

Bryant ranks fourth in all-time NBA scoring (33,643 points) and his \u201cMamba Mentality<\/a>\u201d work ethic is still cited as a major influence on current athletes. He spent the first eight years of his career as Lakers teammates with O\u2019Neal, with L.A. winning three NBA titles during that span. <\/p>\n

Those Lakers also lost to the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 NBA Finals. Soon after, O\u2019Neal was traded to the Miami Heat, with tension between the two superstars seen as one of the main reasons for the move. O\u2019Neal won another NBA title with the Heat in 2006. Bryant won two more with the Lakers, in 2009 and 2010.<\/p>\n

Over the years, O\u2019Neal and Bryant acknowledged their rocky relationship as teammates but also insisted that they actually were close friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want people to know that I don\u2019t hate you, I know you don\u2019t hate me. I call it today a \u2018work beef,\u2019 is what we had,\u201d O\u2019Neal told Bryant<\/a> on \u201cThe Big Podcast with Shaq\u201d in 2015. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of disagreements, we had a lot of arguments,\u201d he said later. \u201cBut I think it fueled us both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, when it appeared their feud might be heating up again<\/a>, the two NBA greats took to social media to nip that notion in the bud.<\/p>\n

\u201cAin\u2019t nothin but love there,\u201d Bryant wrote of his relationship with O\u2019Neal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all good bro,\u201d Shaq responded.<\/p>\n

Bryant and his daughter Gianna were among the nine people who died in a Jan. 26, 2020, helicopter crash<\/a> in Calabasas. O\u2019Neal was one of the speakers<\/a> at the Feb. 24, 2020, memorial service for \u201cmy friend, my little brother Kobe Bryant and my beautiful niece Gigi.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKobe and I pushed one another to play some of the greatest basketball of all time and I am proud that no other team has accomplished what the three-peat Lakers have done since the Shaq and Kobe Lakers did it,\u201d O\u2019Neal said. \u201cAnd sometimes like immature kids, we argued, we fought, we bantered, we assaulted each other with offhand remarks on the field. Make no mistake, even when folks thought we were on bad terms, when the cameras are turned off, he and I would throw a wink at each other and say let\u2019s go whoop some ass.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never took it seriously. In truth, Kobe and I always maintained a deep respect and a love for one another.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shaquille O\u2019Neal has an issue with a recent ranking of the all-time best NBA players. On Monday, Bleacher…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[46612,18933,44823,46614,28459,3363,11804,4255,1260,16996,35719,46613,62,3366,14065,67,132,68,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-65625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-all-time-top","9":"tag-bleacher-report","10":"tag-bryant","11":"tag-kobe","12":"tag-kobe-bryant","13":"tag-lebron-james","14":"tag-list","15":"tag-michael-jordan","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-ranking","18":"tag-shaq","19":"tag-shaquille-oneal","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-stephen-curry","22":"tag-tim-duncan","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114853179808455007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}