“I love his wife, his daughters” Shaquille O’Neal tried all his power to keep a straight face while talking about Theo Ratliff
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Theo Ratliff and Shaquille O'Neal
Shaquille O’Neal during his time in the league was one of the most dominant and powerful centers in the league. Standing at over 7ft tall, There were many that claimed they could stop Shaq but they ultimately failed.
On “The Big Podcast” Shaq talked about a player that claimed with confidence he could stop Shaq. Theo Ratliff claimed he could have stopped Shaq in the 2001 NBA Finals, on the podcast Shaq only said, “I love his wife, I love his daughters, I have nothing to say. You’re absolutely correct, Spice [Adams], you win! He did stop me. I couldn’t do nothing with Theo, none at all. He was just too good.”
Theo Ratliff’s Strategy To Stop Shaquille O’Neal
Theo Ratliff in an interview claimed that the best way to stop Shaq is to wear him down on defense, “I had kind of figured out how not to just to play against Shaq but realized my quickness and my athletic ability to put him in position that he doesn’t want to be in. Especially when I’m bringing him up in that pick-and-roll. He knew he didn’t want to have to guard that. That was big.”
He further elaborated and explained how Dikembe Mutombo was not an ideal Shaq defender, “I knew once they had Dikembe, he’s not that athletic. He’s another anchor that’s going to sitting in that middle with another big so the lanes are not going to be as open as they were with the nucleus that we had where I could step outside and I could move around outside and do a bit more than he could to provide some open lanes them and also run the break and things of that nature.”
While Shaq went giving his reply to Theo on his podcast was calm and composed but he was obviously sarcastic. Theo Ratliff’s strategy was employed by many other players too like Tim Duncan or Hakeem Olajuwon. While it was a good plan, it could not always be used to keep down the Big Diesel.
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