Forget Clinton vs. Trump. The new showdown is Shaquille O’Neal vs. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on how to deal with the president-elect.
The GOP billionaire “won fair and square,” O’Neal said on The Hill. “We have to give him a chance. There’s no need talking about recounts and this and that.”
Fellow NBA legend Abdul-Jabbar countered in a Washington Post column: “The ‘Give Trump a chance’ philosophy is a bad one. We need to start actively re-establishing what our values are before they are slowly eroded, one bad choice at a time.”
The former Lakers stars (in different eras) have long differed on Donald Trump.
Shaq once called Trump “like a straight-up guy,” calling him a friend.
Abdul-Jabbar, a Muslim who vigorously opposed Trump, wrote Thursday that “many leaders are calling for a hide-beneath-the-bed tactic” that included calls for giving Trump “the benefit of the doubt.”
But the NBA’s top scorer made a point: “In the three weeks since the election, however, we have taken a look, and we have seen that our darkest doubts were justified.”
O’Neal didn’t address Kareem directly but said: “We have a process that’s been going on forever. And whoever wins, you just hope he does what he says he’s going to do. You know, candidate Trump promised a lot of people a lot of things.”