Reporters spoke with O'Neal afterwards to ask why he wanted to rekindle the feud with Bryant. "Look, I'm from the streets," said Shaq. "On the streets when you're conducting a symphony you tell it like it is, you don't sugar-coat anything. I used to take part in some mean conducting battles in dark clubs, where we'd go back and forth, just conducting the shit out of an orchestra. That's how real this shit is. Kobe wasn't ready when I hit him with that Allegro Vivace in the third section? Well, that bitch needs to know how I feel, and there is no better way to tell a person how you feel than with an Allegro Vivace from the horns. That's how I asked my wife to marry me, actually."
The orchestra director was angry at O'Neal's decision to take the music off the written page. "That's street conducting. We don't do that here," said regular director Max Kirkman. "That kind of stuff is dangerous, it gets people killed. My brother went down the dark and dangerous path that is street symphony, and it took his life. I don't like to see people like Shaq mixed up in that. We're all just lucky that no one got hurt here tonight. If I were Kobe, I'd stay away, he doesn't know what he can get caught up in here."