Shaquille O'Neal is heralded as one of the most dominant centers in the NBA. The 7'1″ center overwhelmed his opponents en route to four NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat. For O'Neal, his sheer size and skill put him in conversation to be one of the NBA's greatest big men. He's one of those players that brought championships where he went, at least in his prime.
Meanwhile, LeBron James will become an unrestricted free agent this summer. No one is sure on what James will do in the off-season, but like O'Neal, James can project any NBA team into championship contenders. O'Neal chimed in on ESPN's First Take about what he would have done if he was in James' shoes a long time ago.
“I told my boy the other day, if you could do that, I’d have just gone to Chicago to play with Mike,” Shaq said, suggesting that he didn’t even know he could consider joining Michael Jordan and the Bulls.
This is definitely interesting. In the '90s, Michael Jordan dominated the entire NBA, winning six championships in a ten-year span. If O'Neal had joined the Chicago Bulls at the time, it's unlikely that the Jordan would have gone into his second retirement in 1998.
Instead, the Bulls could have swept the entire decade, which would have been a legendary accomplishment on par with the Boston Celtics' tyranny of the '60s. O'Neal and Jordan are two of the most dominant players in NBA history, so the combination would have worked perfectly on the perimeter and in the post.
These comments likely won't influence James to make a move of that scale, but anything is possible in today's NBA.
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