Former basketball star Shaquille O’Neal has become the newest minority owner of the Sacramento Kings, which O’Neal Now owns Minority Stakes In Sacramento Kings.
California investors bought in May after a tug-of-war with a Seattle group.
O’Neal now holds a minority stake of the Kings and was introduced as the newest of the basketball team’s owners at a practice facility in California’s capital.
A basketball player turned rapper and sports analyst, O’Neal joins an ownership group led by tech developer and philanthropist Vivek Ranadive, which bought a 65 per cent stake in the Kings in a deal valuing the team at $535 million.
“This day is an exciting day for me and an exciting day for the ownership group. We look forward to bringing it back to the challenges that it used to be and going even further,” the 7 foot 1 O’Neal said.
The group formed after the Kings’ previous owners, the wealthy Maloof family, agreed in January to sell the team to a handful of Seattle investors including hedge fund manager Chris Hansen and Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer that had planned to relocate the team to their Pacific Northwest city to replace the Sonics who moved to Oklahoma City to become the Thunder after the 2008 season.
In May, following months of bidding, the National Basketball Association denied Seattle’s proposal and the Maloofs struck a deal with the local investor group to keep the Kings in place. O’Neal, who played for the Los Angeles Lakers and a host of other teams including the Miami Heat, agreed in June to tutor Kings Center DeMarcus Cousins and act as an informal adviser to the team.
Sacramento fans remember O’Neal as the player who handed their team a massive blow by rallying the Lakers from a 3-2 deficit to win the 2002 Western Conference finals. O’Neal referred to the team as the “Sacramento Queens” and accused their players of flopping.