Old Tim Duncan nemesis takes pathetic shot at Spurs first championship

For someone as great as Shaquille O'Neal was, he's very insecure about the San Antonio Spurs. I guess we shouldn't blame him. There was no team that posed more of a threat to the Big Shaqtus than Tim Duncan and the Silver and Black. You would think that after all of these years, he would let things go, but his ability to seemingly find a way to take a shot at the Spurs is unrelenting.

He routinely compares South Sudanese hooper Bol Bol to Victor Wembanyama for no reason at all other than to slight the Alien. He's an instigator when Charles Barkley takes shots at the city as a whole. Now, masked as defending LeBron James and the championship the Lakers won in the bubble during the COVID-19 outbreak, he's attempting to discredit San Antonio's 1999 title.

"...a lot of people try to discredit it. If that one doesn’t count, then you can’t count Mr. [Tim] Duncan’s bubble championship either. That’s right. I said it! If we’re counting Tim Duncan’s lockout-year championship, then you have to count LeBron’s too.” - Shaq

The Spurs 1999 championship is not like the 2020 Lakers title

Before I dive into this, I want to reveal that I am one of those people who place an asterisk on the COVID championship. The outrageous situation the players found themselves in the bubble created in Florida as the world dealt with a global pandemic was very unique.

There isn't much correlation between the circumstances surrounding SA's first championship and LA's 2020 title run. It's a very surface-level thought to claim otherwise.

In 1999, everyone knew the season would be delayed. The players were locked out due to CBA negotiations, and it was only the first of several times a lockout has occurred based on the owner's and players' need to sit down and hammer out a deal. The only thing that was different from what players were used to when the games resumed was they would play fewer games.

That's something players and fans have been clamoring for since before I could form sentences. One of the most common complaints about the NBA is about the length of the season. If anything, a shortened season should have allowed more teams to play at their peak when they needed it most.

There has never been another global pandemic in the modern day. It shut down the league while it was active, forcing a complete change from the norm.

When the pandemic hit, the players were sent to Florida, of all places, and they couldn't bring their families. There were no crowds either, so homecourt didn't exist. The guys played in empty gyms, and it was weird to watch. If it was odd for us as fans, it was definitely strange to the players, and they spoke about it.

All of the players had to deal with the same circumstances, but the changes were so radical that some players were always going to deal with it better than others. Lou Williams spoke about the impact the bubble had on the Clippers, who during that time were up 3-1 on Denver before crumbling mentally due to the criticisms the bubble championship was inevitably going to get.

You can call the Clippers weak-minded for allowing that to creep into their minds, but common sense tells us that two things can be true. While they shouldn't have let that type of doubt enter their minds, the weird situation they were in undoubtedly fueled the collapse. There's no getting around that and they weren't the only ones who struggled. Some players opted not to show up in the bubble entirely.

There's no way anyone should be comparing these two championships unless you just have a grudge against Timmy D and the Spurs. I guess, I don't blame him, though. During San Antonio's run to their first title in 1999, they didn't just beat the Lakers; they swept them. He's probably still salty about that.