Back in January 2021, Shaquille O\u2019Neal made one of his most memorable comments on TNT\u2019s Inside The NBA. There, during a post-game interview with Christian Wood of the Houston Rockets, O\u2019Neal said \u201cI owe you an apology. I really wasn\u2019t familiar with your game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those lines from O\u2019Neal spawned some attention at first, including Wood responding with \u201cOh, man, you\u2019re a casual.\u201d The Score then made a two-panel quote graphic of it later that day. But this really took off more than a year later<\/a>. There, the image just of O\u2019Neal\u2019s comments began to be used in other contexts, including praising the Atlanta Braves\u2019 Travis Demeritte<\/a> and ESPN\u2019s Brian Windhorst.<\/a><\/p>\n The meme has continued to spread since then. And on Friday\u2019s NBA Today, ESPN NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins made his own version, using an \u201cI was not familiar with his game\u201d on the Indiana Pacers\u2019 Myles Turner:<\/p>\n Kendrick Perkins dropped a \u201cI was not familiar with his game, I owe this man an apology\u201d on Myles Turner, seemingly referencing Shaq\u2019s 2021 meme-spawning comments on Christian Wood.<\/p>\n [image or embed]<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social<\/a>) May 9, 2025 at 3:47 PM<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got to show him love, Malika. I was not familiar with his game. I owe this man an apology because he\u2019s a Texas boy. Born in Texas, Texas university legend, UT legend, Myles Turner, been putting on the clinic quietly. I know Tyrese Halliburton and all them get all the love, but look at what this man has been doing, seriously. \u2026 This man, Mr. Turner, my Texas boy, I\u2019m sorry, I should have acknowledged you a little bit earlier than now.\u201d<\/p>\n There seems to be some level of sincerity there in Perkins noting that he should have praised Turner earlier (which ties into discussions around network NBA coverage in particular too often focusing on storylines<\/a>, specific teams and players<\/a>, and style criticisms<\/a>). And the Pacers certainly stand out as a team whose on-court success perhaps deserves more national discussion.<\/p>\n But at the same time, it\u2019s quite funny to hear Perkins doing that literally with O\u2019Neal\u2019s famous line. Maybe that\u2019s a reference, maybe it\u2019s a shot. But this drew much less attention than O\u2019Neal on Wood, so it\u2019s unlikely this particular meme will see O\u2019Neal replaced by Perkins just yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in January 2021, Shaquille O\u2019Neal made one of his most memorable comments on TNT\u2019s Inside The NBA.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,126,2058,367,1007,1278,1302],"class_list":{"0":"post-22269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-indiana-pacers","10":"tag-kendrick-perkins","11":"tag-myles-turner","12":"tag-nba-on-espn","13":"tag-nba-on-tnt","14":"tag-shaquille-oneal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114480631299501957","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}