If you've seen Tiger King already — which naturally, I assume you have — then you probably recall clips of Shaquille O'Neal fraternizing with Joe Exotic and his tiger cubs.
While the documentary didn't shine too much light on that particular exchange, fans are still up in arms and Shaq is not having it.
Now, there's a sentence I never thought I would say...
We almost didn't even have a choice.
Watching Tiger King was inevitable.
But it was worth it just to understand virtually every meme on the Internet rn.
It turns out that Shaq and Joe were actually pals.
Adding insult to injury, Shaq even gave Joe a shout-out on an episode of Inside the NBA.
As expected, there was no way in hell fans were going to let this slide.
I mean, not only was Joe a massive perpetrator of animal cruelty, he was also convicted for attempting to have someone murdered.
This is probably not the kind of person you wanna associate with. Just sayin'.
In the latest episode of his podcast he revealed that he is, in fact, not actually friends with Joe.
"We go in [the G.W. Zoo], and it's a beautiful place, and the character that was there was Exotic Joe."
He then revealed that upon learning about Joe's legal disputes, he stopped visiting the zoo.
"And then, actually, I stopped going," he said.
"Do I put donations to these zoos to help these tigers out? I do it all the time," he said. "Do I own tigers personally at my house? No."
"I was just a visitor. I met this guy. Not my friend," he said.
"And I had no idea any of that stuff was going on."
