Famous rapper DaBaby appeared on a recent episode of NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal’s podcast and recounted a hilarious story in which he almost got kicked out of a Charlotte Hornets basketball game.
“I had eight tickets, eight courtside seats that I paid good money for,” he began. “Six figures of money for these seats. … Majority of the games, four of ’em open. Players come, they see me. They recognize me. They’ll roll the ball over to me. ‘Shoot man, shoot.’
“I get the ball. I try to come out there. They try to come tackle me, bruh. ‘You gon’ have to go. You shoot that, you gotta leave.’ I’m like, ‘Damn, they gave it to me!’
The rapper then claimed that he returned the ball to the players, but they egged him on to shoot the ball despite the warning he had just received.
“I shoot, they come over there, ‘Hey, you gon’, you gon’ have to leave,'” he recounted.
Podcast co-host Adam Lefkoe then asked to confirm if DaBaby was indeed kicked out of that game.
“They didn’t,” the rapper responded. “No, they was going to. They said, ‘Do it again.'”
DaBaby finished by saying that he would never receive that kind of treatment in a city like Atlanta.
“I go to a game here in Atlanta, they gon’ treat me like the president,” he said.
Celebrities of all kinds are often seen sitting courtside at NBA games during the regular season and playoffs. When it comes to hip-hop stars like DaBaby, it isn’t rare to see them get quite friendly with players during and after games. Still, it appears that the rapper got a little too friendly that evening.
DaBaby spent much of his childhood living in Charlotte, so it makes sense why he spent so much money on courtside seats at Spectrum Center. Unfortunately for him and Hornets fans everywhere, the team has not been very successful in recent years.
The last time the franchise advanced to the playoffs was in 2016. Since then, the Hornets have enjoyed just one winning season. They finished the 2023-24 regular season with an abysmal record of 21-61.
To make matters worse, the team is unlikely to gain much from what is likely to be a high lottery pick in the upcoming 2024 NBA Draft. That’s because the incoming draft class is thought to be one of the worst classes in recent memory.
