Shaquille O’Neal may get a bad rap for hazing some of his former teammates and his hyper-critical opinion on current NBA stars, but that hasn’t stopped him from peacing it up with at least one of them.
The Laker legend is in rarified air as a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and soon he’ll be joined by Dwight Howard. Despite their long-standing beef, Shaq has put their differences aside to walk him out at his own request.
On an episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, his cohost Adam Lefkoe announces that the list of HoF inductees for 2025 includes Carmelo Anthony, Sue Bird, Billy Donovan, Maya Moore, and a few others. The last name he mentions is Dwight Howard, and his request is to have Shaq, Kevin Garnett, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar be by his side.
“I’ll do it. I’ll be there. That’s my guy,” Shaq responded.
Soon after, Howard took to social media to salute Shaq for granting his wish.
“Shaq appreciate you man it will be an honor to have you KG, DROD, Hakeem and Kareem walk me into the Basketball Heavens,” he wrote.
https://x.com/DwightHoward/status/1910408361314603151
Now that both are Hall of Famers, we hope the beef has been squashed. It escalated in January when they clashed on social media after Howard went on a podcast complaining about Shaq constantly criticizing him.
“At what point does it stop?” an annoyed Howard asks. “At this point, I’m like, ‘Do we need to throw hands? What are we doing?”
The two big men first started jarring when Howard was called Superman upon entering the league in 200p0p0 and even wearing a cape during the dunk contest. Shaq took issue with that because he’d adopted that persona decades earlier and even has the Man of Steel’s logo tattooed on his arm.
See how social media is reacting now that the hatchet has been buried below.