JaVale McGee’s mother, Pamela, is far from letting Shaq off the hook for his comments about her son.
Pamela wants Shaq to lose his job over the Twitter comments and even went as far as calling him a “coon” on Twitter a month ago. The hurt is still obviously there and Pamela said as much during a recent in-home interview.
“He cyberbullied my son,” Pamela McGee said. “Totally inappropriate. Shaquille needs to lose his job or be suspended. The NBA needs to make a stand.”
“If you really want to get technical with it, it’s bullying. We all have little jokes and stuff. But when you continue to pick on just one person – as his career is resurrecting – there’s nothing to it but bullying. And it’s unacceptable. You can’t allow someone to continue to do this who represents TNT and the NBA.
“He is a representative of TNT and the NBA. Broadcasters are held to a higher authority. He should lose his job.”
Pamela wasn’t done. She continued to attack Shaq’s character and maturity level.
“And, besides, what 45-year-old man will say, I’m going to [slap the s–] out of a current player? He belittles, he berates Dwight Howard. He belittles, he berates [Kendrick] Perkins. But he sits in a glass house. And when people throw back stones, it’s an issue. No. He has to be held accountable.”
The insinuation of Shaq cooning also reared its head once again.
Asked if she thought her son went too far by using “cooning” to depict O’Neal’s antics on the show, which include jabs at players of all ethnicities, Pamela McGee said, “No.”
“OK, the NBA is 98 percent African-American. [73 percent black, according to a 2015-16 study]. He is bullying men of color. When you bully men of color who play your same position … we as a society have to stop condoning ignorant behavior. And, yes, as African-Americans, we have always had individuals who will sell out their communities for two barrels of rum. This is straight-up black-on-black oppression.”
“All of us are guilty if we sit back and laugh and condone it,” she added. “We’re becoming a nation where we now have someone in the White House saying it’s now OK to bully and disrespect. Disrespect people who don’t look like us, talk like us or think like us. All of us should be embarrassed.
“People say it’s just a TV show, but at the end of the day these are young men. This is somebody’s son, this is somebody’s family. I now wake up in the morning with a bad taste in my mouth like a dry heave right before I have to throw up. I’m embarrassed by what we’ve become as a society.”
Shaq may be over the beef but Pamela McGee clearly isn’t.