Shaq Thinks Jill Biden Inviting Iowa Women’s Team to the White House Was About Race: Second Place Team is ‘Never Even Mentioned’

Shaquille O’Neal criticized First Lady Jill Biden‘s for inviting the Iowa women’s basketball team to the White House after they lost the NCAA national championship to LSU.

O’Neal broke down the controversy on the Wednesday edition of The Big Podcast with co-hosts Nischelle Turner and Spice Adams.

The first lady received stark backlash from many including LSU women’s basketball star Angel Reese for inviting the losing team to join them at the White House. (An invitation which was never officially extended by the White House, and later walked back.) Traditionally, only winning teams are invited to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Reese made more headlines after she rejected Biden’s apology.

Despite much debate, an LSU spokesperson later confirmed that Reese along with the rest of the team will accept the invitation from the White House.

“Can I ask something else too? And this was controversial. Can I ask you how you feel about this?” Turner said. “When the First Lady said. ‘LSU — I’d like to also invite Iowa to the White House.’ Although we know she doesn’t make the decision — that caused a big uproar. What did you think about that? Because, you know, we are in this era of participation trophies.”

“No, but that’s not what it was about. That’s not what it was about. I want people to use their imaginations. You know what it was about. I’m not going to mention it,” Shaq said. “You know what it was about, right?”

“We can say it,” insisted Turner. “It became a race issue. It became a team of all Black girls beating a team of all white girls. That’s what it became.”

“I don’t like to throw that word around,” Shaq said.

Turner insisted that society made it into a race issue.

“So in the history of me going to the White House and all the champions going to the White House, we never even mentioned the second team, right?” Shaq explained. “But the fact that it was that versus that. And the other, that lost, that’s when they wanted to make it a participation. ‘Oh they lost but they were there and all that.'”

“Out of pocket,” Turner said.

“Yeah, I definitely thought it was out of pocket,” Shaq agreed.

Co-host Spice Adams jumped into the conversation noting that “If Iowa won she probably wouldn’t have had LSU come there.”

“She wouldn’t even mention LSU,” Shaq said. “There ain’t no probably.”

“Everybody counted their chickens before they hatched,” Shaq said. “Let me just explain why. Iowa’s championship game wasn’t that game — Iowa’s championship game was when they beat South Carolina.”

“South Carolina, Absolutely,” Turner agreed.

“The almighty bBack girl team is undefeated who was going to beat them and they beat them. So when they beat them, they got happy and they when LSU came along they thought they was going to, you know, run us over. But we had way too many dogs,” Shaq said.

Listen above via The Big Podcast.

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