The Hating Of Rudy Gobert Has Reached A New Level After Shaq Calls Him The Worst NBA Player Of All Time

David Berding. Getty Images.

Earlier this week when I blogged about Dereck Lively II lacking some self awareness and taking some shots at Rudy Gobert, I talked about how at this point the whole "hate on Rudy Gobert" movement we're currently living in is kind of lame at this point. Why people can't just accept that he's actually pretty good defensively while having some offensive limitations and just leave it at that is sort of beyond me at this point. Suggesting he makes no impact or isn't worthy of any of his DPOYs is beyond stupid, but then again it's trendy to shit on Gobert so I guess that should be expected.

Our latest example comes from a guy who has been known to hate on or shit on a current era big man, Shaquille O'Neal

See what I mean with this shit getting completely out of hand? Rudy Gobert is the "worst NBA player of all time"??? What are we even doing? Again, why does everyone have to be so weird when it comes to talking about Rudy Gobert as a basketball player? I don't even really give a shit about him or the Wolves and yet here I am blogging about it because I feel like someone somewhere has to be the voice of reason here.

The most embarrassing part of that clip is Shaq appears to be serious. Talking about how if Gobert makes all this money he has to deliver and play up to it, and since he feels like he doesn't (I disagree) then that means he's the WOAT in the history of the NBA. The thing about that is there's just one problem. If that's the criteria Shaq is using to determine the WOAT, well….

If you can't see that whole tweet, here's the full picture

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I never get why people freak out over player's max contracts, claiming they aren't worth it and all this shit. Wrong. You are worth what you have the leverage to negotiate. If the market dictated that Rudy Gobert was worth his deal, then that's just how things work given all it takes is one team to establish the market. That doesn't mean every team should pay that price or a contract like that makes sense for every franchise, but the price is the price and with contracts only getting more expensive this isn't stopping any time soon. We're a few years away from guys having $80M+ yearly salaries. Are they worth it? Yup! If that's what the market dictates then so be it. 

If anything, Rudy Gobert didn't fuck up the system in my opinion, it helped raise the floor for centers. It's not like people aren't getting big deals because Rudy Gobert got a big deal once upon a time. If anything the new CBA fucked the system about 10000x more than Rudy Gobert's contract did, but why focus on that when you could just hate on Gobert instead? It's all so weird.