Jim Rome jabs back at Shaq

While its pretty common knowledge that Jim Rome is a large tool, I can't say he isn't speaking the truth here. When Shaq was ahead of Kobe in titles it meant a lot to him, so the flip flop now seems disingenuous. Actually Rome was also correct a few weeks ago when he criticized Shaq's career (which led to Shaq challenging Rome via twitter to a fight). O'Neal had the potential to be one of the greatest that ever played the game, but it just never was that important to him. Conditioning wasn't important and neither was working on his game in the offseason. More important was his need to be the "man." He left Orlando largely because Penny Hardaway had become more popular and did the same in L.A. because of Kobe.

While this Summer it would be awesome to hear that Shaq is working out like never before with hopes of coming into camp in better shape than previous seasons, all we hear is about Shaq's reality tv show, which if you believe Steve Nash was a stolen idea. So while I'm rooting for Shaq to help the second unit while Perkins is out (I root for all Celtics), my expectations might not be as high as some and I definitely take Shaq's words with many grains of salt.