It’s not that McGee has a pattern of accidently or intentionally hurting his teammates. However he has gained the reputation, fairly or unfairly of making some bone head plays on the court. Those plays have gained monumental recognition and infamy through Shaquille O’Neal’s Shaqtin A Fool segment on Inside the NBA show.
I must admit, McGee has displayed some head scratching behavior on the court, but some of those times, Shaq was using him for a whipping boy. It got to the point, where McGee finally put his foot down and had war of words with Shaq on social media and Shaq was called out for bullying.
Since that incident, things have quiet down for McGee, which is a good thing. He has settled in a comfortable role on a championship team, after being traded to several teams over the last few years. He has made a solid contribution towards the team success and has slowly faded from being the butt of people’s jokes. That’s why this latest incident is unfortunate. The last person on the court, off the bench or anywhere in the arena who needed to be a part of Steph Curry getting hurt is JaVale McGee. It doesn’t matter if it was unintentional, you still get the feeling people were shaking their head in disgust.
One person who didn’t hold his tongue about the situation was NBA analyst and former player Stephen Jackson. He appeared on Skip and Shannon’s Undisputed show a couple days ago and said that play and injury could have been avoided. “JaVale McGee, c’mon man, you don’t plays like that at the end of season like that.” said Jackson. “He didn’t have a chance to block the shot, like that was just a dumb play.” Jackson added on.
Although McGee was doing his job, it seems like everyone should have gotten the unwritten memo to stay away from the fragile superstar at all cost. However, that has been the career of JaVale McGee, he means well, but it just doesn’t always turn out well. When Shannon Sharpe pointed out to Stephen Jackson that McGee was simply a hustle player; Jackson responded by saying: “yeah, he also does a lot of dumb stuff too.” Enough said.