Dwight Howard and Shaquille O’Neal‘s careers have followed eerily similar paths. They both started in Orlando with the Magic, but were eventually lured away by the glitz and glamour of Hollywood to join the Lakers, and reap all the benefits of the league’s biggest media market and (ostensibly) compete for multiple titles (which ended up working out a little better for Shaq).
Early in his career, Howard was often compared to a young Shaq, and somewhere along the way, he decided to co-opt Shaq’s “Superman” nickname, which has been an endless source of annoyance for the man who is a lifelong connoisseur of nicknames both given to him and personally bestowed onto himself. The ongoing Cold War between the two over the superhero nickname has been mostly quiet the past few years, but leave it to Shaq to dig it back up out of nowhere and for no reason in particular.
That’s what he did Monday when he posted this (admittedly hilarious) doctored photo of himself on Facebook posterizing Howard.
Howard hasn’t exactly had the easiest go of things the past couple of years in Houston, what with all the injuries and suddenly finding himself as the odd man out on a Rockets team that has been slowly imploding all season long. He’s looked more and more like Clark Kent instead of the Man of Steel, so we’ll see whether he decides to fire back or just finally pull the life support on this beef once and for all.
