About

I Owe You an Apology. I Wasn't Really Familiar With Your Game is an image macro of former basketball player Shaquille O'Neal captioned with the quote. Online, the image macro has been used as a reaction, often to bring apologies to sports players who've performed above expectations.

Origin

On January 14th, 2021, an NBA game between the basketball teams San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets took place. In the game, Houston Rockets player Christian Wood scored 27 points, leading former basketball player Shaquille O'Neal, who was interviewing the player post-game, to apologize for his earlier comments, saying that he "wasn't really familiar with his game." To this, Christian Wood replied, "Oh, man, you're a casual."

Following the interview, Twitter^[1] user @r0bato uploaded a clip of the exchange between O'Neil and Wood to Twitter, with the tweet gaining over 150 retweets and 1,100 likes in two years (shown below). Within two minutes, Twitter^[2] news account @TheNBACentral shared the clip, with the post gaining over 510,000 views, 630 retweets and 8,800 likes in two years.

Christian Wood called Shaq a 'casual' in his postgame interview lmaaooo pic.twitter.com/hs0e3HC2DE

— Rob Lopez (@r0bato) January 15, 2021

Later on January 14th, the Instagram news account @theScore posted a two-panel image macro of the exchange, with the post gaining over 58,700 likes in two years (shown below).

Spread

The macro did not see widespread use as a reaction image until 2022. On May 7th, 2022, Twitter^[3] user @SorokaPlsHeal made the earliest discovered tweet using the image as a reaction, with the tweet gaining over 60 likes in one year (shown below, left). On July 1st, Twitter^[4] user @LALeBron23 used the image for a post about the basketball analyst Brian Windhorst, with the tweet gaining over 2,600 retweets and 27,900 likes in seven months (shown below, right).

Throughout the second half of 2022, the reaction image saw further popularization online, primarily among sports fans who used it to comment on unexpectedly great performances by players. The spread of the reaction image was followed by edits. For example, in October 2022, a version of the macro recaptioned, "You owe me an apology, you tricked me," saw spread on Twitter^[5] (shown below, left). Also in late 2022, a reverse version of the macro reading, "You can't fool me. I am familiar with your game" was circulated (shown below, right).^[6]

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References