Shaquille O’Neal Is The Latest NBA Genius To Declare The Earth Is Flat, And His Reason Is Amazing

Do you agree with The Big Aristotle’s wacky theory?

Maxim Staff

Mar 19, 2017

Shaquille O’Neal is the latest NBA luminary to out himself as a Flat Earth truther. Yep, it’s actually come to this.

Yahoo Sports recently gave a detailed primer on the long-running narrative that led to Shaq weighing in on the suddenly red-hot subject:

Cleveland Cavaliers star Kyrie Irving was the first NBA player to reveal his flat-Earth beliefs, summarized as such: “Can you really think of us rotating around the sun, and all planets align, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these ‘planets’ and stuff like this?”

Soon afterwards, Denver Nuggets wing Wilson Chandler and Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green endorsed Irving’s flat-Earth theory, with the latter explaining away NASA’s photos of the planet from space by suggesting everyone can manipulate doctored photos of the globe on their phones.

The NBA storyline became so outrageous commissioner Adam Silver had to address it in his annual state-of-the-league address at the All-Star Game, clarifying, “I believe the world is round,” and suggesting Irving was making some broader social commentary about fake news in this country.

Now, Shaq has revealed on his podcast why he thinks the Earth is flat as a panckake, too.

Shaq is a flat-Earther, too

I’m speechless

I love this NBA narrative so muchhttps://t.co/eijTsZKJZm pic.twitter.com/3zOLbABfeQ

— Ben Rohrbach (@brohrbach) March 19, 2017

You can hear him actually explain it in the video here:

Yahoo’s Ben Rohrbach attempts to reason with The Big Aristotle– who incidentally is a college graduate and is otherwise a pretty smart dude–about why the Earth is actually round.

Technically, a 360-degree angle is just a circle. I don’t know why Shaq thinks you would be driving up and down on a circle, but it is possible to drive comfortably on a spherical object when that object’s circumference is 24,901 miles. Think of an ant walking around a basketball, if you will. It might think it’s moving in a straight line, but eventually it will navigate the orb and arrive in the same place.

Also, there are things called mountains, and you drive over them on your way to California. At various angles. But never at a 360-degree angle, because your car would just be careening in circles into a ravine. But we shouldn’t have to explain mountains to you, just how we shouldn’t have to tell you the Earth is not flat. And that’s what’s so great about this new NBA narrative. It raises so many questions, from where players think the sun goes at night to why they believe they travel to different time zones.

So who’s side are you on? Shaq’s or science’s?