'The Earth Is Flat, Yes, It Is,' Shaquille O'Neal Says
Retired NBA star Shaquille O'Neal joined a growing chorus of athletes who reject the idea of a round earth last Thursday when he declared in an interview that "the Earth is flat. Yes, it is."
Prior to O'Neal's declaration of support for the flat Earth theory, Cleveland Cavaliers point guard, Kyrie Irving who spent some time at Duke before entering the NBA draft said in February that he believes Earth is flat.
Speaking on a podcast with teammates Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye called "Road Trippin' with RJ & Channing," Irving challenged scientific evidence that the Earth is round.
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"This is not even a conspiracy theory. The Earth is flat," Irving said on the podcast, published on February 17.
"For what I've known for many years and what I've been taught is that the Earth is round, but if you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel, the way we move and the fact that — 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?" he asked.
Asked about Kyrie's flat Earth comments last Thursday, on the podbay.fm show, O'Neal said he supports the view.
"It's true. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. Yes, it is," the 45-year-old star said.
To back up his position he pointed to his experience as a traveler.
"I drive from coast to coast, and this s*** is flat to me. I'm just saying. I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it's flat to me. I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle."
Like Irving, O'Neal also shared his doubts about the information being taught in American schools.
"Listen, there are three ways to manipulate the mind — what you read, what you see and what you hear. 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," he said.
In a follow-up apperance on the "Road Trippin'" podcast, Irving said some people treated him as if he "didn't have a brain on" after his initial comments about the Earth being flat but he was in fact celebrating his independent use of his brain with his ideas on flat earth.
"It's OK to think something that, I guess, the majority wouldn't think," he said. "I just didn't like the fact that us being able to celebrate our individuality and things that we ultimately hold on to, and just because we don't believe what the world thinks or what the majority thinks, then why punish that? That's the only thing I felt like that got misconstructed is just that it's OK to believe one thing. It's OK to have your own thoughts and be able to function and be able to formulate your own thoughts and opinions and still be able to convey them to other people."
Despite his celebration of individual thinking, however, a few scientists have since dismissed Irving's flat Earth theory and those who think like him.
Mark Kruse, a physics professor at Duke University, told USA Today that it was good Irving is questioning things but questioning if the Earth is round isn't productive.
"There's a lot of misinformation out there. In some things, it's good that he's questioning established theories but this is one that is somewhat undeniable, so he probably shouldn't go there ... Things like the nature of time, the nature of space, the nature of fundamental particles, and there's a lot of information more recently that even questions the possible relation of these things to our consciousness, so I think there are deeper things he could question rather than the shape of the Earth ...," Kruse said.
Bill Nye the Science Guy told Sports Illustrated that "it is really concerning when you have people in the public eye, or you have people in general who think that the Earth might not be round" because it devalues the scientific method.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson also told TMZ that he was happy that Irving was a basketball player, not working with NASA. He joked that they should "take everybody who thinks Earth is flat and launch them into space," only agreeing to bring them all back when they admit they were wrong.
