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The “beef” between Shaq and JaVale McGee hit a dangerously new high a couple weeks ago which resulted in some angry tweets back and forth and Shaq threatening to harm McGee when he sees him. Warriors teammate Kevin Durant jumped in the middle of it at the time to defend his guy and threw some insults at Shaq in which he responded to KD on twitter to tell him to mind his business. Since then, whatever beef there was with McGee was over as Shaq promised to never speak on him again. He didn’t however promise to never talk about Durant and he did just that shortly before “Inside The NBA” went on air on Thursday.

Shaq made it clear to Ben Golliver of “The Crossover” that Durant hasn’t earned the right to talk about him the way he did.

“KD doesn’t have G–14 Classification,” O’Neal told The Crossover, referring to his oft-mentioned “unwritten” designation that applies to players who have won titles. “He can’t talk to me like that. He may think he does, and he’s sticking up for his teammate. He’s a great player, but you ain’t in the club yet. You’re on the outside in line with [Charles] Barkley, [Karl] Malone and [John] Stockton. You’re not in the club with me and those [championship] guys. That’s why I tweeted him, ‘Mind ya business.’”

It wasn’t that long ago when it was one of Shaq’s co-hosts, Charles Barkley, who had a player come for him in a not so friendly manner. Lebron James called him out and referred to him as a “hater” when Barkley said Lebron shouldn’t be complaining about needing more help in Cleveland. Shaq explained the difference and why Lebron has earned the right to talk to a great player like that but Durant hasn’t.

“LeBron has a lot of clearance because he’s won championships,” O’Neal said. “But when a guy who hasn’t won championships makes comments, you say, ‘How do you know?’ … [Durant] was just trying to stick up for his teammate. If you read into what he said, none of his s— made sense. Well, actually some of it made sense. He said I was strong and I bullied people. Of course, that’s exactly what I did. I’m not going to go shoot jumpers and do all of that.

“Just put it this way: The league is soft and these guys are sensitive, period. I was sensitive [as a player] too but I never went back at [older players]. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain never said s— to [support] me. Did I cry about It? No. Kareem said in the paper one time, when they asked him, ‘Shaq is doing great, he has numbers similar to yours, what do you think?’ His response was, ‘Well, he hasn’t won a championship yet.’ I could have gone back at him, but I didn’t. I sucked it up like a real man and was like, ‘OK, watch this.’ A lot of guys, these days, when you say anything about them they start whimpering and crying.”

Shaq definitely has a point about players in the league now being way too sensitive about criticism but at the same time the older, former players are too sensitive about expecting respect from younger guys just because. It doesn’t work like that. It still has to be earned as a man. If older players are going to talk about the young guys then they have to understand they are fair game for responses.

I wouldn’t expect much of a response from Durant to these new comments. Recovering from his injury and getting back on the court to finally try and get his first ring is likely the only thing he is concerned with.

Written by @IamJoeSports

H/t The Score