After Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley Rips Kendrick Perkins Apart With Stinging Reality Check

Kendrick Perkins said it himself. It’s “war.” The war went this way. Perkins said the two HoFers in TNT don’t watch basketball. HoFer 1, Shaquile O’Neal responds twice. Perkins responds again. TNT also responds. HoFer 2, Charles Barkley gets the last word. We should let Barkley have this one because he rarely gets to be the one who does the mic drop.

Jumping into the diss war was TNT protecting its star analysts. They played a clip of Perkins getting dunked on by Blake Griffin as payback. (Let it be known, only TNT can tease its own.) Charles Barkley also steered into the persona Perkins is pushing with a little quip. “Shaq you out here killin’ roaches aren’t you?” Because what else could both of them be doing if they don’t watch the Knicks play?

Sir Charles proceeded to casually comment on the audacity. “How you gon’ average 5 points a game gone call me out?” Even Kenny was standing up for his buddies, calling out the audacity too. Shaq maintained they don’t watch Knicks games in Studio J but they certainly watch Perkins getting dunked all day.

For context, Perkins and Knicks fans took gross offence that Shaq and Chuck don’t give the 2nd seeded team in the East its due. They dismissed them prematurely asserting that Knicks will lose to Pacers or Magic in due course. They aren’t betting on them in the playoffs but Perkins is.

The NBA pro-turned-ESPN analyst implied his TNT counterparts indulge in lazy analysis when he said in a New York-based radio show that Shaq and Chuck “obviously don’t want basketball.” He on the other hand does, and believes the Knicks led by Jalen Brunson have a chance at making a deeper playoff run. Knicks’ chances aside, battle lines have been drawn.

TNT Crew turns Kendrick Perkins’ past on him

Shaq heard the commentary and questioned if the Celtics champ (2008) has the credentials to question two Hall of Famers. And Hall-of-Famers they are. Even if Perkins has one more ring than Barkley, they had two very different careers. Perkins averaged 5.4 points per game. Barkley, in contrast, averaged 22 points per game. Before Chuck dropped that gem of a reminder, Shaq and TNT had trolled Perkins to oblivion.

O’Neal also played into it, admitting they don’t watch games. But he repeats, he watched Perkins getting posterized by Blake Griffin as shown by TNT. That was in 2012, when the Clippers’ Griffin recorded his most cinematic dunk over the Thunder center.

O’Neal gave him the ‘Shaqtin a Fool’ treatment too with a montage of Perk’s ‘Tragic Brunson’ era. He threw in obnoxious gum chewing too to prove, “I’m him.” The reel brought Perkins to the comments declaring war. So far the score sits Perkins 1 : Shaq & Chuck 4.