Shaquille O’Neal Struggles With Undying Hatred Triggered by Victor Wembanyama’s ROTY Honor, Charles Barkley Reveals

After staying off the Wemby hype train all season, Shaquille O’Neal still found himself genuinely happy for the unanimous Rookie of the Year. Victor Wembanyama even had to listen to Shaq’s terrible French. What went unseen, though, is the decades-old resentment unrelated to Wemby that resurfaced for Shaq. However, the Inside Guys are sensitive to Mr. Sensitive’s moods. So Chuck and Ernie couldn’t help but press that sore nerve on The Steam Room while Shaq was not around.

Charles Barkley, who knows very well how petty Shaq is, provided the context on the podcast. “One of the best people I’ve ever met in this business, one of my favorite people, who passed away a few years ago, Fred Hickman. Shaq to this day, he says, ‘I got to stop hating on Fred Hickman. He the one that didn’t vote for me.’ Like he remembers stuff like that. I was like, ‘Come on, man!’ This dude makes me laugh so much.”

Before he passed away in 2022, Fred Hickman was the subject of Shaq’s ire for over two decades. It started in 2000 when the late sportscaster gave his first-place vote for that year’s NBA MVP to Allen Iverson over Lakers star, Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq won MVP that year but he lost the chance to be the first unanimous MVP in NBA history by one vote – Fred Hickman’s vote. Steph Curry would become the first unanimous MVP 16 years after that fact.

Hickman is pretty beloved at TNT from the time he used to work there. But not so much loved by the TNT analyst who made the NBA awards a touchy subject for Shaq. Even Ernie Johnson noted Shaq got weird as they read the teleprompter that said Wembanyama is the sixth player in NBA history to unanimously win ROTY.

Shaq won 96 of the 98 total votes in 1993 to win the same honor with the other two going to Alonzo Mourning. It was never about Wemby or the ROTY. As Chuck said, Mr Sensitive just wanted to be a unanimous shoo-in for an award. It didn’t stop him from celebrating Wemby in his usual fashion.

C’est la vie for Shaquille O’Neal

O’Neal was and is not on the Wemby hype train but has no problem admitting the youngster is talented and deserved to win ROTY. The grudge against Hickman was not displayed when the Spurs rookie appeared on TNT to celebrate his win with the Inside Guys.

It gave Shaq the opportunity to flex his French skills that start and end at “C’est bon.” That translates to ‘that’s good’ in French. So at least it wasn’t like speaking Slovenian to Luka Doncic. But Chuck triggered Mr Sensitive to prove that’s not the only phrase he knew. So Shaq yelled, “Merci beaucoup.” Suddenly all the TNT analysts were dishing out their French vocabulary, leaving Wemby to judge their accents.

Wemby was smart enough to leave the interview praising their accents. At least no petty grudges left there.