{"id":696262,"date":"2026-06-10T19:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/696262\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T19:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:57:08","slug":"you-gotta-double-big-dog-nick-van-exel-explains-why-its-easy-to-pick-shaquille-oneal-over-nikola-jokic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/696262\/","title":{"rendered":"“You gotta double big dog” – Nick Van Exel explains why it’s easy to pick Shaquille O’Neal over Nikola Jokic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denver Nuggets<\/a> center\u00a0Nikola Jokic<\/a>\u00a0is arguably the best player in the NBA today. Jokic has won the NBA’s MVP award thrice in the last six years and led the Nuggets to the 2023 NBA title. He is also coming off his second straight triple-double season, and this past campaign, Nikola became the first player in NBA history to lead the league in rebounds and assists in the same season.<\/p>\n

But great as the Joker is, former NBA point guard\u00a0Nick Van Exel<\/a>\u00a0says he would still take his former Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> teammate,\u00a0Shaquille O’Neal<\/a>, over him if he were to pick a center to play with. According to Van Exel, Jokic is very good and special, but there is no one like O’Neal.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

“Would you want to guard a motherf\u2014r that can score every time in the post? Or would you want to guard a motherf\u2014r that’s going to sometimes make a 3-point shot in the perimeter?”asked<\/a>\u00a0Van Exel.\u00a0“It’s literally that simple, cuz think about this, you ain’t got to double ‘The Joker.’ They don’t have to leave off nobody if Shaq is guarding ‘The Joker.’ All he got to do is lay contest. But on the other end, ‘Joker’ can’t f\u2014k with Shaq. Joker can’t guard Shaq in the post.”<\/p>\n

Shaq will wear down Joker<\/p>\n

Jokic is a big boy at\u00a06’11”\u00a0and 284 pounds. However, O’Neal was a monster. Whether it was the young Shaq who was 300 pounds and had 10 percent body fat or the thicker\u00a0 2002 version, which he once claimed to be 400 pounds,\u00a0 the Los Angeles Lakers legend was a man mountain that no big man could back up and one that bulldozed his way to the basket with raw strength and power.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Sure, you can argue that he was a horrible free-throw shooter and that defenders could just foul him and send him to the charity stripe, where he would split his foul shots or even miss both. But Van Exel says if Jokic guards O’Neal for one full game, Shaquille’s physicality would take a toll on Nikola’s game. Nick said the case would be even worse in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

“In a seven-game series, when I’m (elbowing you), what’s gonna happen? So how many 3’s is he going to be making, say you win two games, in a Game 6? What that jumper gonna be lookin’ like? Stop playing. But ‘Joker’ is cold. But I just got to take Shaq because you gotta double big dog,”\u00a0he added.<\/p>\n

Related: “Make sure you don’t fall asleep, they do take jewelry” – Carlos Boozer shares the wild warning he received about NBA groupies<\/a><\/p>\n

Shaq’s sure he would dominate today’s NBA era<\/p>\n

In December, Shaquille said that if he played in today’s era,\u00a0he would not have any problem with the current crop of centers, including Nikola<\/a>. O’Neal said he would still play the game the way he did during his era and would still be unstoppable.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

“I would love to play now, imma tell you why. Every time Joker shoots a three, I would run right past him, I would post up in the middle and play my game. I wouldn’t do a bunch of pick-and-roll; they would double me, and I would punch it to my guy. I’m not changing my game,”\u00a0O’Neal\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0on “The Big Podcast”.<\/p>\n

With all due respect to other NBA centers, past and present, no one has been more physically dominant than Shaq. And yes, Van Exel is correct: Jokic can’t guard O’Neal. But then, nobody could, back in his day. You could only hope he missed his free throws. And even if he did, the amount of beating that opponents took from guarding him alone was too much to handle.<\/p>\n

Related: Patrick Ewing avoids comparing Nikola Jokic to all-time great centers: \u201cThere was a lot of great bigs\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Basketball Network<\/a> on Jun 10, 2026, where it first appeared in the Latest News<\/a> section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denver Nuggets center\u00a0Nikola Jokic\u00a0is arguably the best player in the NBA today. Jokic has won the NBA’s MVP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[1753,1055,355,227125,1756,181884,99],"class_list":["post-696262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-nick-van-exel","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-shaquille-o39neal","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}