One_and_Done wrote:Clearly the success of his teams speak to that, and alot of guys on Shaq's teams liked him as well.
We can say the exact thing about Wilt though, he had plenty of team success in his career and many of his teammates loved working with him.
The first thing that came to mind was 'how is a modern team supposed to function if their star refuses to live in the same city as the practise facility?' There's no way that could work.
That's a very era-specific thing though and it didn't last long.
For all Shaq's pouting he would mostly do what the coach was asking. Wilt wouldn't alot of the time.
This is a strange way to criticise Wilt. You can do that in a lot of ways, but the guy is known for reshaping his game multiple times in his career only because his coach asked him to do so. Wilt had issues with certain coaches, but the good ones he had did miracles with him, because he was coachable.
Shaq on the other hand played always the same way and refused to do things coaches wanted him to do, like play defense in 2001 season (he said he wasn't paid to play defense).
I think both players are just fine from coaching perspective, you just have to work around their egos.
He also insisted on going out and trying to 'get stats' early in his career, because he thought that was how he got paid.
That's actually not true, it's a well known fact that McGuire created this strategy of Wilt scoring as much as possible and Wilt agreed to try that.
The unwillingness to practise is also pretty problematic. Sign me up for Shaq turning up to practise, even if he's going to do 5 dumb things to try and get laughs and approval during each one.
Shaq also skipped practices and came in very out of shape at the camps. We're not comparing Wilt to Tim Duncan or Karl Malone here, Shaq didn't like and often didn't practice himself.
