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Mike Bibby recently completed his first season as the Sacramento State Hornets' head coach. The season will be documented as part of a new TV series on the Roku Channel. (Photo by Scott Marshall/Getty Images)
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Mike Bibby may be best known for his career with the Sacramento Kings, but he’s trying to make a name for himself in the head coaching ranks while leading Sacramento State’s college basketball team.
The 47-year-old Bibby starred for the Kings during their most notable time period in the early 2000s when they were the top rival to the Los Angeles Lakers, the Shaquille O’Neal/Kobe Bryant-led squad that would win three championships during the time period.
Bibby – who played with the Kings from 2001 until 2008 – helped lead Sacramento to five straight playoff appearances (2002 until 2006). They’ve only had one playoff appearance since.
Fast forward to the present day and Bibby still has a presence in Sacramento as the university’s head coach. He just completed his first season with Sacramento State, going 10-21 in the process. O’Neal is actually the general manager of the program with his son, Shaqir O’Neal, actually a part of the program.
Bibby said his relationship with O’Neal – a former rival on the court – is great. O’Neal’s Lakers defeated Bibby’s Kings in seven games in the 2002 Western Conference Finals in one of the greatest playoff series in NBA history.
“We’re good friends,” said Bibby of his relationship with O’Neal in a one-on-one interview. “When we played, we’re enemies, but never in my days I thought that we’d be close friends. We FaceTime each other and talk about stuff. He’s helped us out a lot with recruits, raising money. Never did I thought in my life I’d be on FaceTime with Shaquille O’Neal, him being my general manager and me being the head coach of a college.”
The school will be put on display as a docuseries that will be premiering on the Roku Channel on May 1. The series – called "Fear Nothing: Sac State" – will follow the men’s basketball program and show Bibby’s first season at the helm as head coach.
The series is being produced by Overtime and Omaha Productions – NFL great Peyton Manning’s company – and will have six episodes as it documents the Sacramento State Hornets’ season behind the scenes, in the locker room and on the campus.
When asked what makes the program stand out for a docuseries, Bibby makes mention of the NBA connections.
“That’s an opinion question,” said Bibby. “But you got Shaquille O’Neal, probably the best center to probably ever play, the best to play the game. You have me, the former Sacramento Kings player, coming in to coach and just the recruits and stuff that we bring in the town. Just trying to make the school excel, and you got Shaq coming in here helping you. Got a head coach that you know played in the NBA, played 14 seasons in the NBA, that’s where all these kids are trying to go in a lot of connections with this that these people that we have in order to make that possible.”
Sacramento State is in the Big Sky Conference and will join the Big West conference next season. Along with the notable NBA figures in Bibby and O’Neal, they obviously have some big-name prospects in O’Neal’s son, Shaqir, and Mikey Williams, a four-star recruit who is notable because of his robust social media following and previous sneaker deal.
Williams – a combo guard – signed a multi-year endorsement deal with Puma at the age of 17, becoming the first American high school basketball player to sign an endorsement deal with a global footwear brand. This was shortly after NIL was legalized in 2021, with Williams becoming one of the first faces of the new era.
The 21-year-old Williams previously played with the UCF Golden Knights and averaged the second-most points per game on the team this season (17.1). Bibby detailed what makes the 6-foot-3 guard stand out and why he’s such a notable name in the college ranks.
“He was one of the very first guys that started getting this NIL when it first started,” said Bibby of Williams. "He got a lot of money starting as a kid, and he’s one of the first guys – he’s one of the first guys that signed with Puma.
“People have opinions about him,” Bibby continued. “But they’ll get to see the real Mikey Williams, and the type of guy that he is.”
Sacramento State dealt with a number of injuries during Bibby’s first season as head coach, with Williams limited to 21 games and the team forced to use a number of different lineups throughout the season.
Bibby mentions that as a major reason why the program didn’t achieve a better record this season and believes health will be a major reason why Sacramento State will be better during the 2026-27 season.
The former Kings guard gave major credit to O’Neal’s season, Shakir, for playing out of position to help the team as it was injured during the season. O’Neal was one of just three players to appear in all 31 games.
“It’s unfortunate, we’ve had a lot of injuries this year, so we had him (Shakir) playing out of position,” said Bibby. “He was playing as our four man, and Shakir is probably a two or three. But he stepped into the role that we had for him with no questions asked. He went out and fought for us every night. You gotta give kudos to the kid for playing a position that he probably didn’t want to play and helping us in that aspect.”
“We were 10-21, there’s a lot of times where we had practice with six people, seven people, the coaches had to get in there,” Bibby continued to say. “We had a lot of injuries that we didn’t expect and things that hurt us. We were playing with eight guards out there at one point playing. Our five man that played all season is really a four man, but then he was getting foul trouble. We had a two or three guy that’s usually a two or three guy playing as the five man. So we had to adjust on the fly.”
Bibby said some of the biggest challenges of being a head coach really boil down to understanding the rules and also when it comes to the amount of practice time for the players.
“The biggest adjustments was just learning all the rules,” said Bibby. “ Coaching is all the same. The kids are different than when I grew up, but you have to learn to treat the kids a certain way nowadays. Just the fact of all the rules, there’s a lot of rules that you have to abide by, that you can do and you can’t do, and you can practice this many hours, and you can only go down to the gym for this many hours. That’s the biggest adjustment.”
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