Kyrie Irving captured the conversation at NBA All-Star Weekend by revealing his belief that the Earth is flat. At the time, most people either subtly poked fun in Irving’s direction or boldly shouted him down but, since that point, some high-profile folks have come to his defense to varying degrees.
Now, we can count Shaquille O’Neal among them.
“It’s true. The Earth is flat,” O’Neal said. “The Earth is flat. Yeah it is. Yes, it is. Listen, there are three ways to manipulate the mid — what you read, what you see and what you hear. In school, first thing they teach us is, ‘Oh, Columbus discovered America,’ but then he got there, there were some fair-skinned people with the long hair smoking on the peace pipes. So, what does that tell you? Columbus didn’t discover America. So, listen, I drive from coast to coast, and this sh*t is flat to me. I’m just saying. I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat to me. I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity. Have you looked outside Atlanta lately and seen all these buildings? You mean to tell me that China is under us? China is under us? It’s not. The world is flat.”
You can listen to the whole thing here starting around the 9:30-minute mark, but above is the choice excerpt. O’Neal actually used the fact that Christopher Columbus did not actually discover America as evidence and even cited some of his nationwide travels in a vehicle. This is clearly irrefutable evidence.
With Shaq, it’s always hard to determine just how serious he is but, if taken at face value, it is clear that he is riding with Kyrie Irving on “Flat-Earth Island” for the foreseeable future. This would not be the first time that O’Neal peddled an opinion that did not make a ton of sense to many, many people but we know he isn’t shy and this is yet another window into the way that the Big Aristotle’s mind works.
(h/t Ben Rohrbach)
