During his lone MVP season in 2000 and his 28th birthday, Shaquille O’Neal pulled off a performance that is forever going to be embedded in the league’s history books. However, it would have been a very mediocre game against the Los Angeles Lakers’ forever rivals, LA Clippers, if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hadn’t meddled in the game too much and forced Shaq to bring out his beast mode.

From 1999-2000, Shaquille O’Neal played at a whole other level. Not only did he win the Finals MVP, the league MVP, but also helped the Los Angeles Lakers grab their first championship in 12 years.

In fact, he would have also been the league’s first unanimous MVP if he hadn’t fallen short of just one vote. Yet, the Lakers were building a dynasty and completely destroying other teams, all thanks to Shaq and of course, Kobe Bryant. However, one of the most iconic performances of his career took place on his birthday.

Shaq, and actually, the entire team wasn’t playing up to the mark against the Clippers. Seems like he wanted to rush to his birthday party that he was planning for a long time. However, one mistake from Kareem completely turned the game around.

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar brought out the best in Shaquille O’Neal

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is one of the greatest NBA players and is also a former Lakers superstar. But at the time of this matchup, he was an assistant coach for the LA Clippers, hired to bring the best out of a team that was deemed as one of the worst at the time.

During the game, when the Lakers started to trail the Clippers, the 7-foot-1 superstar noticed something. His idol, Kareem, was telling Keith Klaus and other players defending Shaq, how to stop him. Watching this, O’Neal started taking the game more seriously. Not only was his idol giving his opponents the cheat codes to Shaq but not even looking at him.

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So, Shaq said, “Every time I did a move, I would look at him but he never looked at me.” Shaq had become unstoppable. He finished the night with a 61-point performance, shot 24-of-35 from the field, and shot 13-of-22 from the free-throw line.

After the first quarter, the Lakers completely dominated the rest of the game. In fact, a little towards the end, Lakers coach Phil Jackson showed some mercy on the Clippers and benched Shaq. The Clippers had tried everything, double-team, triple-team, even the infamous Hack-a-Shaq, but nothing worked. Kareem had pinched a nerve that O’Neal just had to take his revenge.

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