JaVale McGee and Shaq’s beef has come to an abrupt end after both of their mothers got involved. The latest escalation of their feud started late last Thursday after Shaq ran yet another lengthy video on TNT detailing the many mistakes and bloopers McGee has made over his NBA career.
That video turned out to be the last straw for McGee, who has long been ridiculed by fans and the media for being a dumb player. McGee and Shaq had a heated Twitter exchange overnight and then Kevin Durant and Steve Kerr both spoke out in McGee’s defense at Warriors practice on Friday. O’Neal responded to Durant, telling him to stay out of it, and continued to call McGee “a bum,” before mothers (and the Warriors) stepped in and everything stopped.
McGee recently spoke with Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post in a feature on his emergence this season as a productive rotation player on the league’s best team, and noted that the reason he went off the way he did was that Shaq’s latest video finally proved to be too much after an accumulation of jokes and people making fun of him (not just O’Neal).
“They see a blooper here and there, and they just think, ‘Oh, he’s dumb,’ ” McGee said. “I mean, what can I do? I can’t ‘at’ everyone on Twitter and tell them I’m not dumb. Because that looks dumb. I’ve let a lot of stuff go over my career. I’m not really a confrontational person. I’m really a last-straw kind of person.”
McGee also told Kilgore that one of the hardest things about the constant jokes is that his reputation is like that of someone that has had significant off the court troubles, when he’s simply made some bad plays on the court over his career.
“I have a reputation, unfortunately, of guys that have, like, drug cases,” McGee said. “I feel like I have that stigma, and I haven’t done anything. Literally. Nothing. It’s just crazy the way people portray me.”
It’s clear that McGee is fed up and feels he deserves more respect than what he’s gotten to this point of his career. Now in his ninth year in the NBA, McGee has landed in a spot that embraces him for who he is and he’s surrounded by a group of players that allows him to do what he does best (attack the rim and grab rebounds) without needing him to try to do anything more.