In The Least Shocking News Ever, Shaq Had A Secret Code To Tell His Teammates To Stop Passing Kobe The Ball

[Source] - On the topic of Bryant not passing, Raja Bell shared an incredible story on CBS Sports’ “Kanell and Bell” podcast. Bell played with O’Neal on the Phoenix Suns, after O’Neal’s time with Bryant had ended. While there, O’Neal explained to Bell that the Lakers had a signal they would use when they planned to stop passing the ball to Bryant because he was shooting too much.

“Shaq told me a story. We had a kid named Gordon Giricek on our Suns team, he had gotten there, and Gordon would go in the game, and Gordon was about his buckets. So Gordon would get in, and no matter what we were doing, no matter what the flow or the chemistry was, Gordon would be just, you know, shooting the ball. Gordon was my guy, I played with him in Utah. 

“But Shaq started saying ‘hey guys, this is the symbol’ (twitches thumbs downward) ‘when I give you this, Gordon doesn’t get the ball anymore.’ And I’m like ‘dude what is the background on that, where’d you come up with that?’ And he was like ‘when Kobe was young, he would be going in and just trying to get ‘em, so the rest of us had a universal kind of code that if we looked at each other and went (gives signal) then that meant Kobe didn’t get the ball anymore.'”

This very well may be the least shocking news ever but I still can’t get enough. I love it. I really appreciate Kobe running his mouth again in order to give us like 3 days of content and remembering that this duo broke up and ruined the Lakers for 7 years.

Of course Shaq had a secret code with his teammates. There’s zero doubt they had this secret meeting as Kobe was doing his own thing and came up with it. The best part is how obvious the secret code is. Just twitching your thumbs downward. Oh, I wonder what that means.

This whole ‘beef’ has been hilarious. They may not be beefing, but there’s zero chance they like each other and truly made up. Just to catch everyone up to speed. You had Kobe say that he’d have 12 fucking rings if Shaq was in shape.

Then you had Shaq clap back and say that they’d have 12 fucking rings if Kobe knew how to pass the ball – especially against the Pistons. That’s the one series that really ended this relationship and that loss was fairly embarrassing, no matter how good that Pistons team played.

Then, naturally, they took a turn to make fun of Dwight Howard.

But I’m not buying it. How did Shaq think Kobe was talking about Dwight? He was pretty clear who he was talking to. This is just an obvious reason as to why I think they still hate each other.

Now that said, as much as I hate Kobe, I’d love if he knew that this was a thing when he was playing and just caused him to jack shots even more. Like he sees Shaq thinking he’s being smooth, only to get the ball and just jack a contested long two.