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Kevin Hart’s Pics with "Tall Friends" Kevin Durant and Shaq Provide the Laughs We Needed
Fight Night star Kevin Hart proves why he doesn't always see eye to eye with his famous friends.
Funnyman Kevin Hart proved why hanging out with his friends and NBA legends Kevin Durant and Shaquille O’Neal is a tall order for the Fight Night star in a set of hysterical photos.
Hart, who stands at 5-feet, 5-inches, poked fun at his height in a pair of photos on Instagram, showing the actor and comedian happily posing next to both men. The only problem? Both basketball stars towered above him and were so tall their bodies were cut off from the shoulders up.
“Always good catching up with my brothers …. Love running into my guys!!!!! Great stories and great laughs!!!!! P.S This is how I take photos with all of my tall friends…. It is what it is,” Hart hilariously captioned the images.
In the first photo, Peacock’s Hart to Heart talk show host stands next to Durant in a collared sweater and dark pants. Although both men have their hands clasped together at the waist in the same position, Durant — wearing more casual sweatpants and a sleeveless hooded sweatshirt — is barely recognizable since his head doesn’t make it into the frame.
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Hart is again seen smiling alongside O’Neal in the second photo.
How tall is Shaquille O'Neal?
The 7',1" former Lakers star has his arm amicably draped over Hart’s shoulder, but Hart barely comes up to his chest and O’Neal’s head can’t even be seen.
Kevin Hart impersonated Shaquille O’Neal on Saturday Night Live — using stilts
Funnily enough, Hart has previously impersonated Shaq on TV, though he needed a bit of help to reach the basketball legend's height.
In the December 16, 2017 episode of Saturday Night Live, Hart mocked O’Neal and his creative linguistics while impersonating his friend in a hilarious sketch that still remains a fan favorite.
SNL’s “Inside the NBA” sketch had O’Neal, played by Hart on a pair of stilts, providing some basketball commentary alongside Alex Moffat as Ernie Johnson, Chris Redd as Kenny Smith, and Kenan Thompson as Charles Barkley. Hart portrayed his friend as a bumbling co-host, with the inability to turn a phrase.
"Hey, well, let me tell you something: every dog has its day. But it's nighttime, no time for dogs. Dogs are asleep! So it's cat time. Cats come out at night. Freaks come out at night. Shaq a freak,” he said in one exchange.
"Shaq, you got to get it together, man," Thompson's Barkley tells him at one point. "I think you're the only basketball player whose brain is aged like a football player."
Hart roasted his friend again in 2011 during an appearance on Conan.
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Kevin Hart is in on the joke
Hart's recent photos with Durant and O'Neal aren’t the first time he's playfully made jokes about his height. He complained in his 2019 Netflix standup special Irresponsible that his wife liked to watch pornographic videos of tall men.
“One of the sites wasn't even porn. One of the sites was a bunch of tall men being active,” he joked. “They were changing lightbulbs, putting sh-t on shelves, hanging paintings. What kind of sick sh-t is this? What the f-ck is this? She was like, ‘What? You can't do none of that stuff, I like that stuff.’"
Hart — who said on 60 Minutes earlier this year that he is 5-feet, 5-inches “with a shoe on” — explained in the interview why he doesn’t shy away from comedy at his own expense.
“It's talking about the things that you aren't afraid to laugh at about yourself. I'm really confident that the laugh that I'm getting, you're not laughing necessarily at me, as if I'm a joke. You're laughing at the experience,” he said. “I'm giving you an experience through a story that is relatable. And more importantly, I'm saying things that other people just don't have the heart to say.”
Hart strikes a more serious tone in Peacock's Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, a star-studded limited series inspired by a brazen real-life heist in 1970, set against the backdrop of Muhammad Ali’s much anticipated return to the boxing ring in Atlanta.
Hart plays Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams, a hustler who uses the boxing match to throw a lavish party — which soon becomes the perfect burglary target — for an elite list of clients with plenty to lose.
New episodes of Fight Night, a limited series, are released on Peacock every Thursday.
