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Who did Shaquille O’Neal direct his “I owe you an apology” comment towards that led to a great meme?
Shaquille O’Neal is often considered being one of the greatest basketball players of all time, as well as one of the best centers to ever play in the NBA. While in his prime, Shaq was known for deadly combining size, speed and strength that made him one of the toughest players in the NBA to go up against, he has been known for a lot of other things after his retirement.
Since hanging up his boots in 2011, Shaq is mostly known as an entrepreneur with a net worth of close to $400m, an NBA analyst, a commentator, a podcast host as well as quite a comedian. Shaq has made plenty of iconic comments which have been turned into iconic memes–but none more so than the “I owe you an apology” meme that does the rounds now and then.
As it turns out, the “I owe you an apology” meme has a very recent origin.
It turns out that Shaq directed his statement to Christian Wood of the Houston Rockets last year while analyzing on the panel of Inside The NBA on TNT. The now Dallas Mavericks man had come under criticism from Shaq and Charles Barkley on the Inside The NBA panel, but his performance on that night seemed to have won Shaq over – and quite in style.
As the Rockets were playing against the San Antonio Spurs, Wood put on the best performance of his career as he racked up a career-high 15 rebounds and five made 3-pointers in the Rockets’ 109-105 win in San Antonio. Wood’s evening got significantly better when Shaq took it upon himself – humble as ever – to apologize to Wood for his criticism of the Rockets man.
“Christian, this is Shaq, I owe you an apology, I wasn’t really familiar with your game”, said Shaq, to which Wood jokingly replied “Oh man, you’re a casual”. The rest is history, as the interaction is now stored in meme culture.
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