Kevin Hart’s NSFW line towards Shaquille O’Neal at All-Star games is last straw for fans: “Dressed like a p**n director”

The league and Inside the NBA had roped in Kevin Hart to emcee the 2025 NBA All-Star weekend in San Francisco.

Kevin Hart’s NSFW line towards Shaquille O’Neal at All-Star games is last straw for fans: “Dressed like a p**n director”

Emcee Kevin Hart had an NSFW joke for Shaquille O'Neal during NBA's All-Star weekend

The crew of Inside the NBA cover the final games as part of the 2025 NBA All-Star weekend. That means it would be the last time Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson host the show as exclusive broadcasters. To help them host the Sunday’s activities, they roped in Kevin Hart as emcee.

The crew along with Candace Parker will manage four teams who will look to execute the new All-Star game format. That format has come under criticism from the likes of Kevin Durant and Draymond Green who feel the very format will be detrimental to fan experience.

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Their words seem to manifest as those short 40-point games saw All-Stars play very little minutes. The NBA and NBPA had tried to motivate the players with the interest of bringing in competition so as to make it exciting.

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However, it was not to be as apart from a few blocks and long range three pointers, the three games became a bore fest. Kevin Hart was supposed to use his comedic abilities to bring some laughter out of fans. He did do some justice to his task in the first two games. However, ahead of that last game, he said this.

Shaq, first things first. Why you dressed like a p**n director?

Kevin Hart said
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This did bring some bits of laughter from the crowd. However, many saw it as a blatant attempt to make the All-Star weekend interesting. That final game was also boring as O’Neal’s OGs beat the Global Stars in a game where some important players were missing.

Fans lose it after Kevin Hart’s NSFW joke towards Shaquille O’Neal

The missing players aside, fans did not appreciate how TNT and the NBA broadcasted the 2025 NBA All-Star weekend. They felt that Kevin Hart‘s NSFW joke was the last straw in an otherwise extremely uninteresting weekend of festivities.

Brining in NSFW jokes in an attempt to roast the likes of Shaquille O’Neal to work the fans took it a bit too far. They believe the stakeholders could have made it more interesting without going to the extremes. They took to social media to slam Hart, TNT as well as the league.

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Inside the NBA closed out the 2025 NBA All-Star weekend with a yawn inducing and downright bad production. They had expected more as the actor and comedian has brought in some spice to the league before. This blatant attempt was all too obvious for fans to lose interest in the game which is slowly losing its fanbase.