Rudy Gobert Fires Back At ‘Triggered’ Shaq For Calling Him The Worst NBA Player Of All Time

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Shaquille O’Neal has never been shy about speaking his mind when it comes to sharing his opinion on the state of the NBA, but Rudy Gobert was more than happy to do the same after the Hall of Famer made a pretty absurd claim by asserting he’s the worst player to ever spend time in the league.

Rudy Gobert made his NBA debut in 2013 after being selected with the 27th overall pick in the draft, and while it took the 7’1″ Frenchman a fair amount of time to come into his own, he eventually emerged as a pretty formidable talent thanks in large part to his defensive prowess.

In 2020, the man who is currently a three-time All-Star and four-time Defensive Player of the Year winner was rewarded for his efforts when he signed a five-year contract worth $205 million, but there are plenty of people who would tell you he’s overpaid—including the NBA peers who named him the most overrated player in the league in an anonymous poll conducted earlier this year.

Shaq—who has not been shy about criticizing Gobert over the years—shared a similar sentiment around a month before the results of that survey were released, and he recently doubled down in a big way by claiming he’s not only overrated but the worst NBA player he’s ever seen.

Now, you probably won’t be surprised to learn Gobert took exception to that Scorching Hot Take—one that’s pretty hard to justify, especially when you consider Shaq also mentioned an infinitely more worthy candidate for that title shortly after by name-dropping Ben Simmons.

After the clip started to make the rounds on Thursday, the victim of the big man-on-big man crime hopped on Twitter to fire back while calling out a “triggered” Shaq, who he implied needlessly made the objectively hyperbolic claim because he knew it would drum up plenty of attention.

I’m fairly ambivalent when it comes to The Discourse surrounding Gobert’s alleged shortcomings, but I can’t help but be on his side here.