Son of NBA all-time great joins Sacramento State basketball under Mike Bibby
Mike Bibby last week in a media Zoom call, his first official act as the freshly hired Sacramento State men’s basketball coach, vowed to bring in players who could inject new life into the Hornets, including those with some name appeal.
How does the son of Shaq sound for starters?
Bibby secured the first player commitment to the Hornets when Shaqir O’Neal on Monday afternoon announced through social media that he is leaving Florida A&M via the transfer portal to compete for Sacramento State, which is coming off a 7-25 season and a last-place showing in the Big Sky Conference. That downer of a season led to a national search for a new coach, leading to Bibby, the former Sacramento Kings guard.
Bibby, of course, knows Shaquille O’Neal well. As the Kings lead guard in the early 2000s, Bibby faced the monstrous center numerous times, including during intense playoff series when O’Neal often ribbed the franchise and a city that lustily booed him in competition. He respected the Kings so little that he referred to them as the “Sacramento Queens.”
Shaqir is the youngest son of the Hall of Fame great. The elder O’Neal, a longtime analyst and TV personality on TNT for NBA broadcasts, once held a small ownership share of the Kings.
Bibby said at the end of his Zoom interview last week, “I’m going to turn this around. I have a lot of NBA players who want to send their sons to me to play. We can get kids. We’re going to try to have that Deion (Sanders) impact (when the football Hall of Famer injected immediate new life into the University of Colorado).
“We’ll have superstars in the building, active NBA players stop by.”
Bibby’s formal introductory news conference is 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at Sacramento State.
A 6-foot-8, 200-pound forward with shooting range, Shaqir will be a senior this coming fall. He was a 3-star prospect in high school in Georgia after starting his prep career at Crossroads High in Santa Monica.
Shaqir spent two seasons at Texas Southern, starting two of 41 games. He then moved to Florida A&M, where he averaged 6.7 points and 3.5 rebounds this past season in 29 games, 17 of those as a starter.
This story was originally published March 31, 2025 at 4:19 PM.