LeBron, Durant fire back at Shaq, 'old heads' in Instagram comments

TNT’s flagship Inside the NBA — with Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny “The Jet” Smith — is absolutely entertaining and well produced. It just hasn’t provided quality, thoughtful basketball analysis for years — it’s the ultimate basketball “get off my lawn” show at this point.Current NBA players bristle at it.You can see that in Instagram comments from LeBron James and Kevin Durant on Friday, in the wake of Shaq telling Donovan Mitchell he’s not good enough during a walk-off interview where Mitchell dropped 36 in Utah’s seventh-straight win.After that, @CuffsTheLegend posted on Instagram asking why players don’t take constructive criticism from older players well, and LeBron James and Kevin Durant jumped in.Durant: “Them old heads need to go enjoy retirement. These boys have coaches they work with everyday lol.”LeBron: “There’s a difference between constructive criticism and soft hating though. I’ve seen it both ways come my way, mostly the hate. You can hear it in their delivery.”LeBron is spot on here. What Shaq did was not constructive criticism, it was calling a guy out. It was hating on the modern player. Mitchell handled it perfectly.Today’s players are generally good at receiving constructive criticism, and they will listen to former…
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