{"id":818979,"date":"2026-08-23T19:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T19:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/818979\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T19:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T19:21:16","slug":"shaq-blasts-soft-nba-players-over-1-big-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/818979\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaq blasts ‘soft’ NBA players over 1 big problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shaquille O\u2019Neal is once again taking aim at modern NBA players for their softness, though he has his reasons this time.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neal is promoting his new \u201cDunkman\u201d league, which is simply for competitive dunking. Dunking for show is not as popular in the NBA as it used to be, as evidenced by the difficulty of getting big names to participate in the annual dunk contest.<\/p>\n

To Shaq, that is just evidence that they\u2019re scared.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the word \u2026 soft?\u201d O\u2019Neal said, via Jason Jones of The Athletic<\/a>. \u201cYou can tell them I said it. They\u2019re soft, and they\u2019re scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest star to do the dunk contest recently is Jaylen Brown<\/a>, who suggested that other stars shy away from the event because they don\u2019t want to be turned into a meme<\/a>. That is basically what O\u2019Neal said, through Brown was a bit more diplomatic about it.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, some players just do not care<\/a> about winning the dunk contest. It is not as prestigious as it used to be, and at this point it\u2019s challenging to do anything that has not been done before. Maybe Shaq would call that soft, but some would argue it is just sensible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shaquille O\u2019Neal is once again taking aim at modern NBA players for their softness, though he has his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3770],"tags":[7,6,681,2390,1302,9672,680,476,3820],"class_list":["post-818979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-raptors","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-raptors","tag-shaq","tag-shaquille-oneal","tag-slam-dunk-contest","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-raptors","tag-torontoraptors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117146450892254144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818979","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=818979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}