This week, while speaking onstage for something called Valuetainment, Kobe Bryant caused a minor stir by calling out Shaquille O’Neal for having been out of shape and unmotivated during their time together on the Lakers. After heaping praise on O’Neal, Bryant quipped that “I wish he was in the gym. We would’ve had fucking 12 rings.” He went on to insist that it was “nothin’ but love” between the two, which didn’t stop O’Neal from firing back on Instagram that “u woulda had 12 if you passed the ball more especially in the finals against the pistons.”

It was the latest episode in the longstanding love/hate relationship between the two, which, while never low on fireworks, has at this point become totally predictable. What has shifted is the perception around the dynamic between the two, which no longer feels like a fair fight. In the wake of his glossy post-retirement PR blitz, Bryant has somehow cemented himself as one of the sport’s most celebrated greats, a self-styled savant who doubles as a valuable ambassador. O’Neal, on the other hand, is a big galoot whose role on TNT’s studio show consists largely of physical comedy and calling out blatant silliness around the league in an “it takes one to know one” sort of way. Bryant is so revered, and O’Neal has leaned so hard into clowning around, that it doesn’t even feel like the two inhabit the same planet.

But it’s not just their respective public personas that have shifted over the years in a way that reflects unfavorably on O’Neal. Bryant's stock has risen to the point where only the most fanatical dead-enders still think of him as an inefficient, egomaniacal ball hog. While not in the discussion for GOAT (whatever that means), Bryant’s competitive fire and single-minded zeal have become the stuff of legend, to the point where he’s replaced the increasingly irrelevant Michael Jordan as the standard-bearer in that department. For years, Bryant was as polarizing a figure as you’ll find in sports. The discourse around him at any given moment was so heated, and impenetrable, that it was hard to imagine him ever achieving any kind of stable, agreed-upon legacy.

If Bryant has improbably landed on something timeless, O’Neal is in danger of being swallowed up by history. His resume is still perfectly impressive—career averages of 23.9 points and 10.9 rebounds, four titles, an MVP, three Finals MVPs, and 15 All-Star appearances—but the numbers and accolades only begin to tell the story. In his prime, O’Neal was as dominant a force as the NBA has ever seen. No matter how many defenders opposing teams threw at him, when O’Neal got the ball on the block a bucket was all but guaranteed. The only feasible option was to send him the line, which gave rise to the “Hack-A-Shaq,” which necessitated any would-be contender loading up on big bodies whose sole role was to accumulate fouls. O’Neal was so unstoppable that, when he was healthy and motivated, it was generally assumed that the Lakers were unbeatable. It’s become a cliché to say that he deserved the MVP every year but that doesn’t make it any less true: The entire NBA revolved around O’Neal. Everyone else from that era—even Bryant, Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, and Kevin Garnett—were mortals by comparison.

Unlike Bryant, whose brand is built around conveniently reducing his career to a series of talking points, appreciating O’Neal depends on context. He’s become one of those “you had to be there” athletes, one you simply don’t get if you weren’t around to experience what it was like to watch him in his prime, or closely follow the NBA during those years. Everybody knows that O’Neal was a monster; he’s not esoteric in the way that his former Orlando Magic teammate Penny Hardaway (or, for matter, fellow Magic legends Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, and Dwight Howard) have become, where any conversation about them devolves into a stand-off between “you just don’t get it” and “you were blinded by hype.” But the sheer gravity that O’Neal exerted at the height of his powers is hard to communicate because it was as much a mood, a general feeling in the air, as something that is readily expressed by numbers or even footage. O’Neal cast as long a shadow over the NBA as any player ever has; you could only talk about the league for so long without his name coming up; and the sense of inevitability around him and the Lakers inspired a mix of awe and dread. It was an experience, as emotional as it was empirical, and there’s simply no way to adequately convey, much less recreate, the singular effect O’Neal had on the sport.