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Shaquille O’Neal Says ‘It Is True, Earth Is Flat,’ Dismisses ‘Gravity Stuff’

By JohnThomas Didymus
Published on: 08:53 PST, Mar 19, 2017

NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal has declared that he agrees with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Kyrie Irving that the Earth is flat. Shaq revealed that he believes the Earth is flat when he was asked to comment on Irving’s flat-Earth views during a recent episode of his podcast.

However, some, unwilling to believe that Shaquille intended to be taken seriously, pointed out his reputation as a prankster and suggested that he might have been joking or “trolling” listeners. But others argued that judging from his tone and the manner in which he elaborated his argument, the former NBA star was dead serious.

When Shaq was asked during a recent episode of his The Big Podcast with Shaq, what he thinks about Kyrie Irving’s recent comments that the Earth is flat, he told co-host John Kincade that he also believes the Earth is flat, CBS Sports reports.

“It’s true. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. Yes, it is,” Shaq said.

When a podcast co-host pointed out in disbelief that “We’ve seen the Earth from satellite imagery,” Shaquille posited a conspiracy to manipulate our minds by faking satellite images.

“Satellite imagery could be drawn and made up,” he said, according to the Daily Mail.

The former Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Lakers star then tried to bolster his bizarre argument by citing the much-criticized Eurocentric claim in school textbooks that Columbus “discovered” America.

“Listen, there are three ways to manipulate the mind — what you read, what you see and what you hear,” he said. “In school, first thing they teach us is, ‘Oh, Columbus discovered America,’ but when he got there, there were some fair-skinned people with the long hair smoking on the peace pipes.”

“So, what does that tell you? Columbus didn’t discover America. I drive from coast to coast, and this s*** is flat to me.”

According to Shaq, the Earth couldn’t be a sphere because when he travels in his car “from coast to coast” he never sees or feels himself going up “at a 360-degree angle.” He also dismissed “all the stuff about gravity,” and appeared to argue that Atlanta’s skyscrapers disproved the idea of gravity.

“I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle,” he argued, “and all that stuff about gravity, have you looked outside Atlanta lately and seen all these buildings?”

“You mean to tell me that China is under us? China is under us? It’s not. The world is flat,” he added.

“When I drive from Florida to New York; flat. New York to Seattle; flat. Seattle down to LA; flat. Matter of fact, it’s a square. That’s what it is.”

Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving was the first NBA player to reveal that he believes the Earth is flat. He made the shocking claim last month when he was asked, during a podcast with his teammates Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye, whether he believed in aliens.

“This is not even a conspiracy theory. The Earth is flat… It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you… they lie to us.”

“Can you really think of us rotating around the sun, and all planets align, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these ‘planets’ and stuff like this?” Irving had asked, according to Yahoo!.

Soon after Irving came out as a flat-Earther, a few other Cavaliers supported him and hinted that they agreed with his views. The Denver Nuggets’ Wilson Chandler and Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green all endorsed Irving’s flat-Earth theory.

According to Green, NASA was doctoring space photos that showed the Earth as a sphere.

Seeing that the NBA chapter of the flat-Earth society was gaining in numbers and influence, NBA commissioner Adam Silver felt compelled to address the issue in his annual state-of-the-league address last month.

“I believe the world is round,” he said, and suggested that Irving and his flat-Earth colleagues had used the matter to make a commentary about the problem of fake news in the country, according to the Guardian.

But Irving confounded Silver by doubling down on his flat-Earth theory last week. He also talked about his lucid dreaming experiences and how he met an ex-teammate in his dreams.

However, Shaq’s shocking declaration of his membership of the NBA flat-Earth society could encourage other NBA flat-Earthers to come out in the next few weeks.

But critics have expressed dismay that Shaq, who holds a doctorate degree in education from Barry University in Miami, and has flown around the world several times, would exhibit such shocking ignorance of basic science.

Some expressed shock that after having traveled to China in a plane, Shaq was unable to guess the reason why passengers arrive in China by traveling west from California as well as by traveling east.

Scientists have also explained that we do not feel that the Earth is curved because any small section of the Earth’s huge circumference would look like a straight line from the perspective of a tiny human walking on its surface. A human being would have to fly very high above the Earth to view the Earth’s curvature directly.

But some insisted that Shaq might have been “trolling” listeners and that he did not mean to be taken seriously.

Shaq holds a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University and has completed an online MBA with the University of Phoenix.

He holds a doctorate degree in education from Florida’s Barry University.

[Featured Image by Alan Diaz/AP Images]

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