Camila Sosa
With the Denver Nuggets ‘ win over the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday, NBA on TNT panelist and one of the greatest players in basketball history, Shaquille O’Neal wanted to prove that he is not only a sports expert, but also a man who can master foreign languages.
In the post-game interview with current league MVP and Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, Shaq wanted to show his appreciation for the Serbian nationality center by calling him by one of his nicknames in his native language at the end of his media intervention. O’Neal wanted to congratulate him on his great game and end this same compliment by dedicating it to “Big Honey”, which has been one of Nikola’s mottos since the beginning of his career as a professional. To his bad luck, the former NBA champion would end up calling him “Big Soul,” which caused a lot of confusion and laughter in the 27-year-old center.
Ultimately for his erroneous attempt Shaq blamed his producer for “giving him the wrong information”, but everything was fine between them when he saw that Jokic was the one who most enjoyed his mistake. Despite his dominance over the staves, it seems that O’Neal is far from being able to at least ask where the bathroom is in Serbia. And language is not the problem, we know that well, because he also tried something similar with Greek superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2020 and it didn’t work for him either.
At least The Joker could understand what Shaquille tried to say when congratulating him, Giannis for his part, could only understand a word according to his testimony.
Something in common that both players have at the moment is that the two are fixed candidates to compete for the NBA MVP in the current campaign Jokic would seek the second prize in his career and consecutively with an average of 26.2 points, 13.6 rebounds, 8 assists and 1.4 steals. The Greek to win it would have the third prize for the most valuable in his career and would secure the honor in three of the last four years, with a statistical line of 29.7 points, 11.3 rebounds, 5.8 assists, 1.1 steals and 1.4 blocks.
Shaquille O’Neal won only one MVP award in his career, in the 1999-2000 campaign, where he also won the first of his three consecutive championships with the Los Angeles Lakers. Both in this era and in his own, we don’t think knowing languages would have helped Shaq gain more individual accolades.
