The Phoenix Suns got absolutely demolished in Game 7 by the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday night, and afterwards the Inside the NBA crew tried to figure out exactly what happened that led to Phoenix getting blown out by 33 on their home floor.
Somewhat surprisingly, given their willingness to offer painfully honest criticism, they didn’t choose to bury the Suns for poor effort (which certainly seemed like an issue). Instead, Shaq was just willing to chalk it up to “one of those games” and suggested Phoenix shouldn’t overreact to the loss this offseason, advocating for them to pay Deandre Ayton this summer and mostly run it back next year. We’ll see if that happens, as there was some postgame tension when Monty Williams was asked about Ayton playing just 17 minutes, which he sternly said “it’s internal” and refused to elaborate further.
On the TNT set that was discussed and Shaq again called it “one of those nights” before declaring he would figure he had 15 of them in his 20-year career, which Charles Barkley simply could not let slide, refusing to believe that in 20 years Shaq only had 15 bad games and sparking a classic two-minute argument between the two.
"I DROVE THE BUS!"
Chuck and Shaq are back at it
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 16, 2022
Shaq and Chuck have been oddly on the same page for much of this postseason, instead tending to gang up on Kenny, but this was a vintage Inside back and forth. It had it all, from Shaq yelling at Barkley about having rings and being a bus driver to Chuck dishing out some incredible one-liners to get him even madder — like when Shaq insisted he became a role player late in his career, Barkley retorted “role player? you were rolling from city to city.”
It’s nice to know they can still play the hits and Chuck still knows the button to push to get the big fella all riled up. The ending was great as the crew brought the stats that Shaq only had 10 playoff games in his career that he finished in single figures, which Shaq took as justification of his point about having 15 games.
Source: https://uproxx.com/dimemag/shaq-charles-barkley-bad-games-argument-video-tnt-suns/