NBA great Shaquille O'Neal to be Sac State's men's basketball general manager
O'Neal has agreed to become the men's basketball program's new general manager, Sacramento State officials confirmed to The Bee on Monday. ESPN reported O'Neal will be serving in a 'voluntary' role.
O'Neal, a four-time NBA champion and one of the greatest centers of all time, will be overseeing a program that added his son, Shaqir, this spring after hiring former Sacramento King point guard Mike Bibby as head coach.
Name, image and likeness legislation was passed by multiple states in the summer of 2021 that overturned the NCAA's previous stance preventing athletes from getting paid.
Since then, general manager positions, often filled by prominent sports figures, have been created to oversee spending on players, with examples including former quarterback Andrew Luck at Stanford, Stephen Curry as co-assistant general manager at Davidson, former Senior Bowl chief Jim Nagy at Oklahoma football and long-time NFL executive David Lombardi at UNC to work with Bill Belichick.
Sacramento State has long had eyes on making headlines in the sports scene. The school's football program is hoping to upgrade from the FCS to the top-tier FBS thanks to an influx of NIL money — along with building a new, state-of-the-art football stadium.
The basketball program, now led by Bibby, is coming off a 7-25 season, last place in the Big Sky Conference under Michael Czepil following the resignation of David Patrick, who left last May to take an assistant coaching job at LSU.
O'Neal, 53, is currently working as a studio analyst for TNT following his widely successful 19-year playing career. He won three championships with the Los Angeles Lakers alongside Kobe Bryant from 1999 to 2002. He joined the Miami Heat and won a title playing with Dwayne Wade in 2005-06.
O'Neal owned a share of the Sacramento Kings beginning in 2013 before he announced the sale of his stake in 2022. O'Neal is reportedly worth roughly $500 million.
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