Shaquille O’Neal gave us one of the best announcing bloopers of the year when he said that Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups coached the playoff-bound Detroit Pistons. And Richard Jefferson isn’t going to let him forget about it.
Jefferson has enjoyed a huge promotion at ESPN, replacing former colleague JJ Redick in the network’s lead NBA broadcast booth alongside Mike Breen and Doris Burke. But he was in the studio on Wednesday night as ESPN was airing the Pistons against the Miami Heat in a rare nationally televised appearance for one of the biggest surprises in sports.
And Richard Jefferson couldn’t resist the opportunity to get one over on Shaq by reminding everyone that it is indeed J.B. Bickerstaff who coaches the Pistons, not his former Detroit teammate Billups, and even gave us a pause and a wink at the camera to let everyone know that he was in on the joke.
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— Vito Corleonie (@VCorleonie) March 19, 2025
The Pistons went on to beat the Heat thanks to a Cade Cunningham game winning three pointer with under a second left on the clock. Maybe instead of Shaq not bothering to watch the Pistons and just assuming they are boring or uninteresting, he should be studying up on Cunningham putting his name into the “next face of the NBA” hat.
Usually it’s Kendrick Perkins who draws the ire of the Inside the NBA crew for his criticism that they don’t watch any basketball. We’ll see if there’s any scorched earth response to Richard Jefferson doing it in a much more subtle and humorous fashion.