"I don't have a problem (with Howard)," Shaq said, "But my thing is if you want to call yourself me (Superman), then you've got big shoes to fill. . . . He won a dunk contest with a cape. If you want to be called Superman because of that, it's fine with me. I'm Superman for other reasons."
In the interview, Shaq seemed to imply that Howard doesn't have the killer instinct that O'Neal was once famous for.
"I don't envy him; he's a great young player," he said. "But I've never seen him dog another center out. I tried to dog centers out. I went at David Robinson."
Shaq also argued that he faced much tougher competition during his prime than Howard does right now.
"If Dwight doesn't win two or three championships, I'm going to be disappointed," he told the paper. "He doesn't have nobody. When I came in the league, I had to go through Alonzo Mourning, Arvydas Sabonis, Kevin Duckworth, Rik Smits. Now I can't name any other centers besides Kendrick Perkins and Andrew Bynum. Who else is there? That's it."
Shaq has always been peeved by Howard's use of the "Superman" moniker — which Howard says he picked up from rapper Soulja Boy, not O'Neal — and he has been vocal about it for quite some time.
After a February 2010 win over the Magic, a game in which Howard had 19 points and 11 rebounds for Orlando and O'Neal recorded 10 points and six rebounds for Cleveland, Shaq lashed out.
"Superman my a--," he said. "Don't compare me to nobody. I'd rather not be mentioned. I'm offended."
Most recently, O'Neal threw in a barb at Howard during his retirement press conference in June, telling reporters:
"In light of today I am retiring all of my nicknames: The Big Aristotle, Shaq Fu, the Big Shamrock, the Big Cactus, the Diesel and, finally, the one and only, original, never to be duplicated or replicated, Superman. So from now on, you guys can call me the Big AARP."
(At that same press conference, some of Shaq's employees could be seen wearing T-shirts that read, "The real Superman has four rings.")
Shaq has said in the past that his beef with Howard is "all marketing" and that there's no truly hard feelings between the two titans. He's even gone as far as to call Howard "the only dominant big man left."
But the fact this "Superman" feud keeps coming up has to make you think it gets under O'Neal's skin more than he admits.
<3<3
