And you thought the Shaq vs. Kobe beef was over? It’ll never end. This will go on longer than anything, linger longer than Brett Favre, and it’ll probably still have people talking 10 years down the road. All was quiet on the front for a while, but O’Neal has a new autobiography dropping on Nov. 15 – it’s called Shaq Uncut: My Story and it’s co-written with Jackie MacMullan – and the book gives some more inside info on O’Neal’s view of the feud between two of the most polarizing players in NBA history. According to Shaq, it was Kobe that destroyed the team’s shot at a title in 2004, the year they had Karl Malone and Gary Payton. Deadspin got a hold of some parts of the book, and even though we’ve heard just about every Shaq/Kobe story possible, there were a few in here that got us. During the whole trial situation with Kobe in 2003, Shaq says Bryant got legitimately pissed at all of his teammates and confronted them all face-to-face. Bryant was upset and hurt that no one had come out to publicly support him, no one had helped him out, called him or done anything for him. O’Neal says he did try to call him and then Brian Shaw – who has been around Bryant since he was a little kid – chimed in with this to Bryant: “We don’t even know you.” O’Neal writes all of the guys invited Kobe to parties, to weddings to all sorts of off-court stuff and 24 (or 8 at that time) never showed. Then when it was time for his wedding (prior to all of this), he didn’t invite anyone. Ouch. The 2003-04 tension originally started when Bryant basically went straight from a Laker meeting – with Phil Jackson telling him and Shaq to quit it – to an interview where he blasted O’Neal for being out of shape, lazy and not ready to work in training camp. Still, O’Neal did say a few nice things about his “little brother.” He admits he was young and immature, but says everything Bryant has done now, he told them he was going to do it all, even at 18: franchise leading scorer, five-time NBA champ, the greatest player in the game. O’Neal writes that Kobe told him: “I’m going to be the Will Smith of the NBA.” … The Diesel also tells a great story about Pat Riley and how the two of them once almost put the dukes up. Of course, it all started because our man J-Will was late for practice … Whoever made this video was clearing on some special Halloween candy … Derrick Williams says he should’ve been the draft’s No. 1 pick. Do you agree with him? We have a feeling this is going to play out for the next two or three years. Our prediction: Williams puts up bigger numbers, but Kyrie Irving – as a floor general/leader – influences more Ws. Either way, we are definitely watching more of Minnesota than the Cavs this year … Williams might be gone from Arizona, but the squad is still looking to do big things this year, even if they did lose to a D-II school in a recent exhibition. We previewed the ‘Cats yesterday as well as No. 15 Xavier … ESPN ran down a list of most likely amnesty candidates should the new labor agreement give each NBA team one free pass out of a contract. Some of the rather interesting names in there: Elton Brand, Rudy Gay, Brandon Roy, Richard Jefferson and Rashard Lewis. While we agree with most of those, there’s no way Memphis lets Gay loose. No way. Yes they signed him to a pretty big deal and yes they are either going to have to open up the bank for Marc Gasol or tell him peace, but getting rid of their best all-around player isn’t the answer. There are about 29 NBA teams praying they’re stupid enough and cheap enough to do that. Without Gay, Memphis is a good team. With him, they suddenly become very, very dangerous (it also doesn’t hurt that he’s barely 25 years old) … Marc Spears of Yahoo! Sports reported that former NBA guard Jamaal Tinsley is entering his name into Thursday’s NBA Development League draft … As we wrote yesterday, Kim Kardashian has filed for divorce from her new husband of 72 days, Kris Humphries. This was very surprising. We thought they would grow old together. Oh well; Kris at least wants to keep it together. Kim, not so much. She must’ve saw that Reggie Bush finally rushed for 100 yards this weekend … Besides HumpDash, here are five other NBA marriages that just didn’t quite have what it takes … And Mikhail Prokhorov can do a lot of things that revolve around making money, jet skiing and women, but we didn’t know he could hoop. Turns out, he’s got game or… something that resembles game while playing against a bunch of old dudes on their lunch break. Still, he surprised us. The cameraman keeps peeling to the crowd to show a couple of ladies, and we can’t tell which one is Prokhorov’s woman: the one his age or the one who looks like she’s in college. Anyways, how about a one-on-one tournament of NBA owners? Prokhorov would be out there busting people … We’re out like Tony La Russa.
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