Lakers News: Mark Cuban Pitches LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal Team Up For Wild Idea

Would the Hall of Fame Lakers be amenable to this?

Oct 7, 2024; Dallas, Texas, USA; Mark Cuban looks on during the game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Memphis Grizzlies at American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images / Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

Former three-time Los Angeles Lakers champion center Shaquille O'Neal is no stranger to NBA team ownership. For a long time, the 7-foot-1 former league MVP owned a stake in the Sacramento Kings, who were once a major postseason rival for O'Neal and Kobe Bryant's Lakers.

During a recent episode of O'Neal's "The Big Podcast With Shaquille O'Neal," he spoke with Dallas Mavericks majority owner-turned-minority owner Mark Cuban about the prospect of buying into a new NBA franchise.

The league is eyeing expansion in 2027, and the two most rumored new locales for fresh teams are Seattle (who of course were robbed when the SuperSonics were briskly relocated and rebranded as the Oklahoma City Thunder for the 2008-09 season) and Las Vegas.

"Mark, hypothetical question: NBA gets two more teams awarded. People are talking smack to you... Would you do it again [buy into another NBA team]?" O'Neal asked.

Cuban, for his part, proposed bringing in another marquee name as a potential co-owner.

"If it was Shaq, yeah I'd look at making a comeback," Cuban conceded. "Yeah, it would be interesting. Now you talk about a movie, would you go in with LeBron or no LeBron?"

"I would, because I'm the type of owner that I let people run it," O'Neal said. "To answer your question, I would love to go in with LeBron."

O'Neal and current Lakers superstar combo forward LeBron James were once teammates for a 60-win Cleveland Cavaliers club in 2009-10, far past O'Neal's heyday. The Big Diesel was still a starting-caliber center, but no longer an All-Star. James, however, was very much in his prime, and after his top-seeded Cavaliers fell short of the NBA Finals for the second straight season (they were upset by the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Semifinals), the eventual four-time MVP departed in free agency to join the Miami Heat, another former O'Neal franchise.

"We get me, you, LeBron, we go to HBO, we get them to do a behind-the-scenes show and put up a chunk of the money, or we go to Disney — because they're an NBA partner — we might have something there," Cuban said.

"Hey, I'm in, brother," O'Neal said.

James, for his part, has long discussed the prospect of owning a league franchise, with a particular focus on Las Vegas as his preferred spot. A Vegas squad would be the closest team to Los Angeles, where James currently resides and appears to have gotten comfortable. The 20-time All-Star is under contract with L.A. through the 2025-26 season, which would be his record-setting 23rd in the league. By the 2027-28 season (i.e. the hypothetical debut season of a Las Vegas team), James would be playing his 25th year in the league — even he may call it a day before that.

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