We know that the crew on Inside the NBA is always open and ready for a good time. Halloween this week? Great! Time for some even-bigger fun and games. Did you see this week’s show Tuesday night?
This year the keyword for Shaq’s “costume” – if you can even call it that – was “subtle.” If you didn’t know a little bit of backstory, you might have missed it. But, to his credit, O’Neal did give the deets of his Halloween night “look” when asked about it.
As NBA-history fans know, Shaq landed with the Miami Heat after his time in Los Angeles with the Lakers. He even won another championship with the Florida team. So it seems he was looking to share a little love and give some tribute to a current Heat player, Jimmy Butler.
Shaq appeared on set in a sweet wig of long, straight black hair, along with a t-shirt, a lip ring, and a nose ring as part of an Emo Jimmy Butler costume. Check it out below:
Pretty hilarious, considering Butler has pranked “media day” in the NBA for a while now, showing up in various strange styles and costumes. A year ago, Jimmy Butler came to the realization that he could get a year’s worth of laughs if he showed up to media day with a wild new hairstyle, because the photos taken on media day are what TV networks and other outlets will use for his headshot all season long.
Hats (wigs?) off to Shaq for seeing that a great Halloween costume doesn’t have to be completely over the top. We’re kinda tired of the full-body dinosaur suits. Just sayin.’ C’mon, the man is getting away with wearing a t-shirt to work for the night. As the old (very old) cliche goes, nice work, if you can get it.
How about the rest of the “Inside” team? Charles Barkley wore a completely ridiculous hat as part of his bus driver costume. Not sure where that came from. Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson leaned heavily on the movies for inspiration, with Smith dressing like Iceman from Top Gun and Johnson dressing like Vito Corleone from The Godfather.
Nice work. None of them went as far as Giannis Antetokounmpo did one day prior when he dressed up like Hulk and did his best Hulk voice. Still, a great, funny show as always.
Ahh yes… good to have the NBA back, along with Inside the NBA.