So here’s the deal: Shaq knows you are having a bad day and is here to make you feel better by flubbing basic math on national TV. That’s the only explanation I have for this conversation about fuel efficiency and how much it costs to fill up a gas tank, which took place Thursday night on Inside The NBA.
It was a light night in the NBA playoffs, with only a dreary Celtics/Bucks game to tide over the basketball faithful. But Shaq was there to bring the entertainment when Kenny Smith started talking about a car he wanted to get but is hesitant because of how much it would cost to fill the tank.
Smith said it would be $80 bucks to fill it up, and the car uses gas quickly so he’d have to do that once a week. It’s a valid concern! But Shaq claimed that if he filled the tank when it was half-empty, rather than on E, it would only cost $20. What follows is, without exaggeration, the silliest and most fun bad math you’ve seen all week.
https://streamable.com/h2rjt
“When it gets to half,” Shaq said. “Then you put in 20 dollars and bring it back to full.”
That is, of course, completely wrong. You need $40 of gas to fill half of a tank that cost $80 to fill completely. Everyone else on set knows this, but at this point Shaq had set up the proverbial table in the college quad with a “convince me I’m wrong sign” on it. There was no going back.
“You’re complaining when it gets to zero that you have to spend $80, right?” Shaq asks, correctly.
“When it gets to half, you put $20. When it gets back to half, you put $20…” Shaq trails off, incorrectly, as Smith, Ernie Johnson and a beside himself Charles Barkley then essentially try to explain fluid dynamics on a dang basketball show.
Shaq is convinced that the crew is collectively trying to “play” him, which draws more laughter from a TV set mostly in disbelief. Here, for example, is a snapshot of a man definitely not buying a new automobile.
“I’m sorry,” Smith said. “I really want to know because Ernie I want to get this car but I maybe want to save gas money.”
Suddenly, Shaq changed his tune to the proper math by explaining that if he put $20 of gas into a tank that’s half-full, it would be at three-quarters full. But by then Smith’s braiin was torn asunder by the logic Shaq had already assaulted it with, and he had no interest in conceding that his coworker had come around on the math.
“But who’s on first?” Smith asked, referencing the Abbot and Costello routine that had suddenly broken out on the show.
This is a show about the NBA, sure. But when it’s at its best, Inside the NBA is about nothing at all. And we’ve never needed it more.
