Shaquille O’Neal Reveals TNT’s Shaqtin’ a Fool Segment Was Created for This Reason

When Draymond Green dropped by The Big Podcast, he had to bring up Shaq’s less-than-friendly relationship with JaVale McGee. Most of it is credited to Shaqtin a Fool. The segment started when Shaquille O’Neal officially joined Inside The NBA and McGee was featured on it one too many times. Draymond Green who has been on TNT  enough times both on Shaqtin a Fool and as a studio analyst knows him as a much different player on the court. So he had to ask Shaq what the backstory was behind the popular segment.

Shaq, a bonafide entertainer, who had nicknamed McGee “Tragic Bronson” for his mistakes, said that it was never about showing anyone in a poor light. The few regular appearances were a coincidence. Shaq repeated a few times that the clips weren’t his fault.

“The show was created to get rid of the word ‘bloopers,'” is the short story according to its namesake. It was added as soon as Shaq made his TNT debut. His early years as an analyst weren’t smooth sailing. However, his entertaining quality kept him on for over a decade, a big part thanks to him running Shaqtin a Fool. O’Neal though leaves it to the staff behind the scenes to collect the clips and do the editing.

Shaq doesn’t even crown the Shaqtin MVP anymore. Fans vote for the winner online every week. He’s mostly the narrator with assistance from Kenny to provide the clown music. And it also replaced an old trendy term in the NBA community.

Shaquille O’Neal’s own tragic past makes history

The title is a play on the word ‘actin’ a fool.’ O’Neal doesn’t say how they workshopped the name but as history is a witness, it doesn’t take much effort to Shaq-ify a word. The intent was to show the weekly bloopers without calling it that or making an allusion to the longstanding term, “Tragic Bronson.”

“We all have bloopers like when I used to try to bring the ball up and you know to do the Michael Jordan thing, D. Scott [Dennis Scott] then used to call me Tragic Bronson.” Interestingly, that was originally “Tragic Johnson,” a name given to Magic Johnson for making bizarre turnovers in the eighties. Dennis Scott probably reinvented the term for O’Neal who popularized it on Shaqtin a Fool.

Interestingly, ‘Tragic Bronson’ also haunted Kendrick Perkins during his NBA career when commentators roared that term over his fumbles. During his funny beef with Perk recently, O’Neal compiled the ESPN analyst’s Tragic Bronson clips for a separate Shaqtin a Fool treatment on Instagram. That just proves that O’Neal’s segment doesn’t discriminate nor was it designed for one person. No one is safe from Shaqtin a Fool.