Shaquille O’Neal is following his son to college.
Shaq has agreed to become the general manager of the men’s basketball program at Sacramento State, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Monday night. The roll will be a voluntary one for Shaq.
Shaq will join Mike Bibby, who was hired as the program’s next head coach earlier this year, at Sac State. Bibby, who spent half of his NBA career playing for the Sacramento Kings, will take over in what will be his first college head coaching job. He recently helped lead his former high school in Arizona to five state titles.
Bibby and Shaq will attempt to turn the Hornets program around. The school is set to open a new basketball facility on campus next fall, though the Hornets have had just two winning seasons since they started playing in 1991. They have yet to make the NCAA tournament, and Bibby will be the fifth head coach in the last six seasons.
Shaq’s son, Shaqir O’Neal, has committed to play for Bibby next year. Shaqir spent last season at Florida A&M, where he averaged 6.7 points and 3.2 rebounds per game. The 21-year-old spent three seasons at Texas Southern before that, too.
Bibby and Shaq never played with each other in the league, though they squared off plenty of times throughout their careers. Shaq is the latest NBA player to agree to work as a general manager at the college level. Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry will be the assistant general manager at Davidson, and Atlanta Hawks star Trae Young is doing the same at Oklahoma.
Shaq played in the league from 1992-2011. The Hall of Famer is currently working as an analyst at TNT on “Inside the NBA.”
“Me and Shaq have a good relationship. It probably wasn’t good when we were playing against each other,” Bibby said earlier this month when he was introduced at Sacramento State, via The Associated Press. “There was a lot of try to get a rivalry going, try to make it big time in the league.”
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