Bro', I realized yeeeears ago that there was something about Kobe Bryant that brought out the worst in people. In Kobe's second season - dude wasn't even a STARTER yet - dudes in my high school hated Kobe with a passion. LOLOLOL. My next year, in college, my dorm neighbors hated Kobe. Literally nobody on my floor liked Kobe. It was almost taboo to admit you liked Kobe. I've had CHICKS tell me they hated Kobe, and they didn't even watch basketball. Lebron fans whining about hate don't even know real hate.
Does Lebron have a cranrab, whose entire existence on an online forum seemed to revolve around debunking the notion that Kobe was a great basketball player.
Point is, diminishing Kobe's accomplishments were standard practice. Think I'm lying, pull up old BGOL threads about Kobe's scoring explosions from the mid-2000s. Some of you niggas hated that nigga with a passion.
I even remember niggas was hating on Kobe when he was interviewed by Inside The NBA, when they were asking him about the commercial where he 'jumped over a car'. Shit ain't even had nothing to do with basketball, and niggas were in that bitch spitting ether.
So, there was no incentive to point out any negatives about Shaq, if it suggested that Kobe Bryant wasn't a completely reliant upon Shaq, sidekick.