On the latest edition of the Pat Bev Pod, Patrick Beverly and his guest and cohost of the podcast Million Dollars Worth Of Game had nothing but praise to heap onto Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame member Shaquille O'Neal. Gillie discussed with Beverly and his cohost Rone how O'Neal's dominant play at LSU gave him a foreshadowing of how his career would go once he hit the NBA.

“Out of every player that I ever seen play since I was a kid, it was only one person that I ever seen in college. And I was like, you know, he's winning the championship in the NBA. That was Shaq. He's winning at least once. You knew it. When LeBron was coming out of high school, you was like, when is he going to be good? He probably going to be good. You, you didn't know. Cause he was 18 years old. You watch Shaq playing college, you like, he just dunked on six people, bro. He dunked on five players on the other team and on his team.”

Beverly agreed, saying, “Nothing you can do. You can double team and you can front him. There's nothing you can do.”

Gillie then went on to commend O'Neal's toughness as a player, calling other centers “soft”. Then, Gillie asserted that Shaq would average 55 points a game if he shot a better free throw percentage.

“If Shaq, Shaq foul shot was good, he would average 55 points a game, man,” Gillie said, once again to Beverley's agreement.

Then, Patrick Beverly gave his own assertion of Shaq's dominance relative to his free throw shooting. ” No lie. If he would've went like 80%, not even like 90, if he would've went like 78%, he would've averaged 53 points a game.”

Shaq was a phenomenal player, nearly unguardable in his prime with the Orlando Magic and the Los Angeles Lakers. But, an Achilles heel of the big man's game had always been his free throw shooting percentage. O'Neal finished his career averaging 52% from the free throw line on 9.3 attempts per game. His free throw shooting numbers are consistent across his four seasons in Orlando (54%) and his eight seasons in Los Angeles (53%).

Gilie Tha Kid and Patrick Beverly are both correct that O'Neal's points per game average would've gone up if he made more than 4.9 of his 9.3 attempts from the free throw line in his career. However, he likely wouldn't have averaged 53 or 55 points per game as even if he was 100% from the free throw line, it would've only been an addition of about 9 to 10 points to his point per game total relative to his attempts at the line per game.

But, the point stands: Shaquille O'Neal is one of the most dominant forces in NBA history and he surprisingly was only at the cusp of his greatness in his 19 years in the NBA.