When Shaquille O’Neal met Scottie Pippen in the NBA playoffs during their careers, each managed to find success against the other.
In 1995, O’Neal, then with the Orlando Magic, bested Pippen and Michael Jordan by beating the Chicago Bulls in six games in the second round of the postseason. But the next year, the Bulls swept O’Neal and the Magic en route to eventually winning the NBA title, the fourth of six championships collected during the reign of Jordan and Pippen.
After O’Neal moved to L.A. to play for the Lakers, the two stars—in fact, two of the greatest players ever to compete in the NBA—never battled again in the playoffs, because while the Bulls were winning the final two titles of Chicago’s magical 1990s run in 1997 and 1998, the Lakers never were good enough to advance to the NBA Finals to meet them.
So, if we’re talking about head-to-head playoffs matchups, the two are basically even.
But O’Neal isn’t content to let lie quietly the rivalry between Pippen and Shaq that nobody talks or thinks about. And as former NBA stars who also whiff hilariously at golf balls sometimes are wont to do, Shaq took to Instagram to compare one of his old teams to the one that featured Pippen.
https://www.instagram.com/p/5YKMdqRbuX/
And it didn’t stop there.
https://www.instagram.com/p/5YvsYsQT0c/
The winner of this Instagram feud? While O’Neal certainly gains points for that Sidekick ad burn, I’d go with Pippen, who managed to keep it classy while still effectively roasting O’Neal.
Photo via Jeff Kern/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)