Steph Curry Fires Back at Shaq, Says He's 'Dead Wrong' About Lakers-Warriors Claim

By Ross Kelly December 13, 2018 at 2:15pm

In the latest episode of “my era is better than your era,” the first NBA dynasty of the 21st century is battling it out with the league’s current dynasty.

The early 2000s Los Angeles Lakers, led by Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, won three straight NBA championships from 2000 to 2002.

Shaq won the Finals MVP all three of those seasons, and he said those Lakers teams would “easily win” in a hypothetical matchup against the Golden State Warriors, who have won three out of the last four championships.

“I think we’d easily win,” O’Neal told USA Today. “Other people might feel different, they (the Warriors) might feel different. But we had one of the best teams of all-time in 2001 when we went 15-1 in the playoffs. We would’ve gone 16-0 but A.I. (Allen Iverson) went off on us and stepped over Ty Lue.”

Golden State star Steph Curry heard about Shaq’s comments and strongly disagreed with the Hall of Famer’s claim — although he admitted it’s just back-and-forth talk and no one can truly know who would win.

“Oh, he’s dead wrong,” Curry told ESPN with a confident smile. “Of course. We’d beat them. We can go back-and-forth all day.”

The Lakers peaked during the second of their three straight titles when they went 15-1 in the playoffs to set an NBA postseason record.

Sixteen years later, the Warriors topped that mark by going 16-1 in the postseason. They also became the only team in major professional sports leagues to start a postseason 15-0.

The game has changed dramatically in those 16 years, which makes comparisons between teams of different eras so difficult. Teams averaged 13.7 3-point attempts in the 2000-01 season, while that number doubled to 27.0 attempts in 2016-17.

In a best-of-seven series, would you pick Shaq's Lakers to defeat Curry's Warriors?

“For me, I think it’s a tough conversation because I’ve always found it hard to compare eras to each other,” Curry said. “But in terms of having three banners up there and create parallels and comparisons to how they dominated the league through their run to what we’re doing now, I think that speaks a lot on its own. Just in terms of us accomplishing the goal and fulfilling the potential that we have.”

Shaq didn’t bring up the difference in eras when saying his Lakers would easily beat today’s Warriors, but he did bring it up when asked to compare Michael Jordan with LeBron James.

“We’re talking about two different eras,” O’Neal said. “Jordan averaged 30 points when people could beat you up. The game was more physical. In this era, I’d average 45 (points a game) without free throws. Jordan ruled the ’90s. Me and Kobe did the 2000s, and LeBron’s doing his thing now.”

Curry thinks that conversation about comparisons is premature in regards to his team since they are still in the midst of their run and could add more championships to their resume.

“And we’re still in the middle of it, so — I laugh sometimes, I saw Shaq today talked about his three-peat championship team would have destroyed us for whatever reason,” he said. “All those conversations are just entertaining because, one, who knows, and two, the game is so different.

“Teams that dominated their respective eras need to be left alone in terms of what that means. Hopefully that’s how they’ll approach us when they talk about us 20, 30 years from now looking back.”

For what it’s worth, the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook said that this year’s Warriors team would be 12.5-point favorites over Shaq’s 2001 Lakers team on a neutral court.

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