Shaquille O'Neal. Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports

Shaquille O'Neal gets called out by Jusuf Nurkic for falling for fake news about him

Originally posted on Larry Brown Sports
By Darryn Albert | Last updated 1/12/24

While he hasn’t played for more than a decade now, Shaquille O’Neal is still biting on fakes.

On an episode this week of “The Big Podcast with Shaq,” O’Neal went on a mini-rant about Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkic. Citing a supposed report by “NBC Sports,” Shaq said that Nurkic, who was notoriously struck in the head by Draymond Green last month, was thinking about pressing charges against Green for the incident. He slammed Nurkic over the alleged report, saying that Nurkic was “going to ruin what I created in the big man alliance.” Shaq then went on to ridicule Nurkic’s “big soft a–.”

Here is the full clip (but be aware of the bad language).

Shaq calls Jusuf Nurkic ‘soft’ for thinking about pressing charges on Draymond Green

“You’re going to ruin what i created in the big man alliance…This is something I would tell you to your face if I saw you. You can’t press charges, you just gotta get your big a** up and hit… pic.twitter.com/mSfUim8r8V

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) January 12, 2024

The problem? Nurkic is *not* considering pressing charges against Green, and no such report actually exists.

In a post to his X page on Friday, Nurkic called O’Neal out for the false info and set the record straight.

Lmao first i never said that!!
People be making sh*t up lol

Shaqilović I’m not from here , I’m not losing money and nobody fighting in this NBA… https://t.co/MuweiL317F

— Jusuf Nurkić (@bosnianbeast27) January 12, 2024

It appears that Shaq got duped by a post from an unverified Instagram aggregator. The post, which was dated Dec. 13 (one day after the Green-Nurkic incident), made the claim that Nurkic was contemplating pressing charges and attributed it to “NBC Sports.” With no further corroboration and with Nurkic now speaking out about it, we now know it was all false.

O’Neal is far from the first big sports media personality to get hoodwinked by a fake report. But with a claim as outlandish as that one, O’Neal and his producers would have been wise to do a little bit more research first before sending it to the air.

This article first appeared on Larry Brown Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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