Shaq and Kobe Are Taking Shots At Each Other In Interviews and Instagram Comments Sections [UPDATE]

Kobe Bryant did an interview with Patrick Bet-David earlier this month in Las Vegas at the 10th annual PHP Agency Convention. During the conversation, he lobbed another verbal bomb in the direction of his former teammate Shaquille O’Neal, saying that if Shaq had been in shape throughout his career, he would have been the greatest player of all-time and Kobe would have “f–kin’ 12 rings.”

The clip surfaced this week and ended up on the Instagram account Lakers24ever. That’s where Shaq saw it and responded in the comments section.

Here is a screengrab of the comments:

This is just a perfect encapsulation of Kobe and Shaq’s relationship. Kobe both complimented Shaq’s skill by saying he could have been the best ever and insulted his work ethic. Then Shaq made a lazy joke about Kobe passing and insinuated that he did, in fact, work hard, while he’s kind of well-known for playing himself into shape during the season, which would suggest otherwise.

So now it’s Kobe’s turn to respond. If he wanted to end this debate once and for all, he could turn his documentary team on Shaq’s physical conditioning. There’s footage. There are witnesses. It’s been decades. There will be people willing to go on the record.

UPDATE: Bryant responded later on via Twitter, and said he and Shaq are too old to beef.

UPDATE 2: In an unexpected turn of events, Shaq agreed with Kobe and took a shot at Dwight Howard, who wasn’t involved in any of this up to this point.