Shaquille O’Neal trying to educate the Inside the NBA cast on how to save gas money is one of the most entertaining few minutes of television that you will ever see. And the program went back to the well on Monday night.
Inside the NBA is always at its best when it leans into the absurdity of everyday life and away from the X’s and O’s of basketball. Believe it or not, the original tutorial from The Big Aristotle took place all the way back in April 2018.
Shaq was trying to teach Kenny Smith about saving gas money, which is a much bigger issue in 2026 than it even was back then. His logic was that you could save money by filling up your gas tank when it got down to halfway instead of letting it go down to empty. While Smith and the rest of the Inside the NBA crew were apoplectic at Shaq’s fuzzy math, he was insistent that somehow two halves added up to make less than one whole.
The show used the recent statement by Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson that Cleveland had gotten the best of the New York Knicks in two out of their three games in the Eastern Conference Finals in spite of losing all three games on the scoreboard. That assertion was met with eyerolls by pretty much everyone, even by those who like analytics. Of course, that statement was made to look even worse given the Cavs lost Game 4 by 37 points to get swept in the series.
And that discussion led to Inside the NBA revisiting Shaq’s version of analytics with their incredible Audio Toon that presented the famous segment in a whole new life.
After watching that again, is it crazy to think that TNT could have just turned Inside the NBA into a full-fledged cartoon series? We need Ernie Johnson as Ms. Frizzle leading Shaq, Kenny, and Charles on education adventures like a modern day NBA version of The Magic School Bus.
About Matt Yoder