The basketball icon and four-time NBA champion, 54, has two master’s degrees, a doctorate, served as a sheriff’s deputy and honorary U.S. Marshal, and once played for Doc Rivers. Back in 2016, the basketball icon needed to install a home security system only to have a company quote him $60,000 to $80,000.
During one of his routine trips to Best Buy — his favorite store — he spotted the Ring Doorbell Camera for sale at a fraction of the price and decided to give it a whirl. He began hounding Colin Smeeton, his longtime manager and business partner, about meeting the owner of Ring and investing in the company. The following January, O’Neal made a beeline for Ring founder Jamie Siminoff at CES, the annual tech trade show in Las Vegas, telling him, “I’d love to find a way to partner with you but I don’t want to just be a pitchman; I want to have equity in the company.” So, O’Neal was granted what Smeeton calls “a sizable equity stake in the company” that made him millions when it sold to Amazon for $1.15 billion a year later.
O’Neal sensed a similar opportunity with the NBA Slam Dunk Contest. It had been close to a decade since the annual All-Star Weekend competition was any good (see: Zach LaVine vs. Aaron Gordon, 2016), and a quarter-century removed from the last bona fide NBA superstar participating in it (Vince Carter, 2000).
The days of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant soaring through the air were long gone. I’d put a Ferrari in the middle of the floor for first place and a Rolls-Royce for second place.” He continues, “The last great dunk contest we had was Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon… But then I would scroll through the internet and see these kids do dunks and look at their big [social media] followings, so me and my partners were like, ‘Let’s create a dunk league to put these guys together.’” The result is “Dunkman,” a live televised competition where 24 of the world’s best dunkers spin and slam their way to a $500,000 grand prize, the largest in the history of competitive dunking (and $125,000 for second place). Airing across TNT and HBO Max, and presented by Authentic Studios and TNT Sports, “Dunkman” has proven to be a social media sensation, attracting over 854 million social views across platforms during its group stages.
The final will air the night of Aug. 25. And yes, there may not be NBA superstars jamming it home on “Dunkman” but you do have the unique privilege of seeing a 5-foot-9 furniture salesman from Utah with a nearly 50-inch vertical leap (Hyrum “Hyt Check” Fechser) dunk over several men on a couch and send O’Neal and his cast of commentators — Vince Carter, Draymond Green, Dwight Howard and TNT’s Adam Lefkoe — into a frenzy. According to Smeeton, the president of Authentic Studios, Season 2 of “Dunkman” will see O’Neal scouting the world to find new talent for the competition and may even incorporate undercards, à la UFC, like a 15-and-under junior dunk contest with 9-foot rims and a women’s dunking division.
O’Neal adds, “We’re in talks with a lot of international countries like Poland, China and others. We’re getting calls every day. We’re going to keep it going and do small events, medium events and big events, and our ultimate goal is to partner up with the NBA and take over the Dunk Contest.” As far as his own favorite dunks, O’Neal points to his notorious dunk over the Knicks’ Chris Dudley in 1999, where he discarded him after — “I saw on the internet that that was called ‘The Most Disrespectful Dunk in History,’ and I’ll take it,” he jokes — and his absolute favorite: the Kobe alley-oop to close out the Trailblazers in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals.
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