Kevin Hart is shot, yes. This is a common joke he makes about himself, being a dude who stands at about 5’4″. That is below average. And it’s about 21 inches short of the Hall of Fame basketball player Shaquille O’Neal — who Hart played during an “SNL” sketch parodying TNT’s “Inside the NBA” postgame show.
Hart nailed Shaq’s notoriously rambling style and penchant for going off on tangents at every opportunity, not to mention his faux-feud with co-host Charles Barkley, here played by “SNL” cast member Kenan Thompson. The bit also included Alex Moffat as Ernie Johnson and Chris Redd as Kenny “The Jet” Smith.
“Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, very merry, and if you’re Jewish, happy harmonica,” Hart’s Shaq said as he was introduced, saying “harmonica” instead of “Hannukah.”
The sketch, like many real episodes of “Inside the NBA,” took a political bent very quickly, with Thompson’s Barkley discussing his support of Alabama Senator-elect Doug Jones who won this week’s special election against Republican Roy Moore. Hart’s Shq could help chiming in with a bizarre non-sequitur after Barkley made a jab at Moore riding his horse to his voting place on Tuesday.
“Shaq can’t ride no horse, feet don’t touch the ground,” Hart’s Shaq said. “But, you can’t beat a dead horse, because dead horses tell no tales. Because they’re horses, who lost their tails.”
At the end of the sketch, Shaq had enough of Barkley questioning his weird tangents, and challenged him to a game of one-on-one. At this point Hart stepped out from being the desk and revealed he was wearing extremely long pants over a pair of stilts to elevate the 5’4″ Hart to a Shaq-like height. Unfortunately, the sketch ended before we got to see Hart try to play basketball with the stilts on. It was a huge bummer, but oh well.