Shaq’s awkward conversation with Nikola Jokic wasn’t wrong, but that doesn’t mean he was right

A wholly bizarre moment occurred during the NBA Playoffs on Wednesday night when Shaquille O’Neal spoke to Nikola Jokic shortly after the Nuggets center won his third MVP award. Shaq congratulated Jokic, before essentially saying he didn’t deserve it.

“You know I love you. You’re the best player in the league. I want to congratulate you, but I want you to hear it from me first: I thought SGA should have been the MVP. That’s no disrespect to you.”

This clearly caught Jokic off-guard, as his smile transformed to a black stare as O’Neal rained on his parade.

Jokic won with 79 first place votes, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finishing second with 15 votes — followed by the four Dallas media members (presumably) who picked Luka Doncic to be MVP. It came after weeks of speculation had SGA being on the inside track for the award.

It was an interesting call. If we look at the head-to-head between SGA and Joker this season it’s a serious toss-up between who was the best individual player.

Nikola Jokic: 26.4 pts (.583 FG%), 12.4 rebs, 9.0 ast — 57-25 record with Nuggets
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 30.1 pts (.535 FG%), 5.5 rebs, 6.6 ast — 57-25 record with Thunder

The rub comes anecdotally. This was more-or-less identical statistically to Jokic’s numbers when he won in 2020-21, but more importantly he’s playing on a championship team. There’s no doubt that he’s the most critical part of the Nuggets, but he essentially put in another brilliant season on one of the NBA’s best teams, whereas SGA lifted the Thunder from 10th in the West, to first — and team improvement has been a significant factor in past MVP votes.

In a lot of ways this feels like the make-good for voters picking Joel Embiid over Jokic in 2022-23, which is leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Jokic carried the Nuggets to their first championship in franchise history after Embiid got the award, and it left many people believing it should have been Jokic’s MVP all along.

That said, no matter what Shaq believes, it’s pretty ridiculous to tell Jokic this on live TV — whether you believe it or not. Now, you could say it was honorable of O’Neal to be up-front with Joker, knowing he was going to advocate for SGA, but he could have sent him a text message. He could have talked with him off the air.

The result, as aired, was that Shaq came off as being extraordinarily bitter at Jokic winning MVP — and told him. This was even more bizarre after preceding it by calling Joker the best player in the NBA.

It was enough that even Ernie Johnson seemed mad, and Ernie rarely gets mad.

There was a lot of hedging by Shaq here. Lots of “taking nothing away from Jokic” talk, but that’s exactly what he did. It’s not like Jokic was out here campaigning the voters to be the MVP for a third time, they simply felt he deserved it — and SGA won’t be the last borderline player to be snubbed in end of season awards.

It was fine of Shaq to advocate for his pick, but not in this way or at this time.