Shaq And Charles Barkley Got Into A Screaming Match About The Benching Of DeMar DeRozan

The Toronto Raptors’ season came to an end on Monday night, and there is already plenty of big-picture discussion happening about the future of the franchise. Should Dwane Casey return next year despite their loss to Cleveland due to the fact that the team won a franchise-best 59 games? Should DeMar DeRozan and/or Kyle Lowry be on the trade block? Is there any point in doing anything as long as LeBron James is in the Eastern Conference?

But before they can address any of those broader questions, the Inside the NBA guys had a discussion about a specific thing that happened during the postseason. DeRozan was benched in Game 3, which saw a torrid Raptors comeback that came up just short. It was strange, because it’s rare that a team benches its star for the entirety of the fourth quarter, and even more rare that such a risk pays off.

In the eyes of Charles Barkley, doing this hurt the relationship between Casey and DeRozan, and trust needs to be built back up between the pair. Shaquille O’Neal disagrees, which led to the two Hall of Fame inductees screaming at each other for a good 90 seconds.

As is sometimes the case with Inside the NBA, the conversation eventually turned into Barkley telling Shaq he got dragged to championships by Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade, with Shaq pointing out that he won a trio of Finals MVPs and that Barkley never won a ring. That part wasn’t anything new, but somewhere in the conversation about their NBA careers, there are bits of a discussion about how coaches should handle players.

“You don’t disrespect your best player,” Barkley argued. “If you don’t have a great relationship with your best player, you’re never going to win.”

“That’s not true,” Shaq fired back. “Me and Pat Riley never saw eye-to-eye and what happened in Miami?”

Shaq eventually said he wants Barkley (who seemed to be acting as an avatar for some coaches in this argument) to stop “babying players,” and said that if DeRozan isn’t playing up to his abilities, “he’s gotta sit his ass down.” Things generally went off the rails from there — Shaq screams “Google me, Chuck” at one point — but for better or worse, that’s what basketball fans expect out of Inside the NBA.