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- Shaquille O'Neal made joke that seemed to reference FTX while on-air with Steph Curry during the NBA playoffs.
- Later in the night, he was served in a lawsuit around FTX.
- The Laker legend has reportedly been avoiding process servers related to the case for months now.
During TNT's broadcast of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday, Shaquille O'Neal hinted at his involvement in an FTX lawsuit while speaking to Stephen Curry — just hours before getting served.
"Thanks for getting me in trouble," O'Neal said to Curry, likely in reference to their joint involvement in the FTX case.
"Don't say nothing," he continued, as both NBA legends fell into laughter.
Later that night, O'Neal was reportedly served two legal complaints — one for his involvement in the ongoing FTX lawsuit and another regarding an NFT project — by a process server who attended the game, Adam Moskowitz, co-counsel on the FTX lawsuit, told Insider.
—Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) May 24, 2023
In November 2022, following the implosion of FTX, investors in the now infamous crypto exchange filed a lawsuit against the celebrities who publically endorsed the company. Tom Brady, Larry David, Steph Curry, and O'Neal, among others, were part of the group of figures listed in the class-action suit.
O'Neal was first served in mid-April, following a three-month chase, according to tweets from the Moskowitz law firm, which represents the FTX investors.
O'Neal's lawyers have tried to dismiss the legal claim, saying in a court filing earlier this month that the papers were "tossed," at him while he was driving out from his Georgia home and were left "on the road where they landed."
"After months of dodging service, Shaquille O'Neal was just personally served with 2 Complaints, while broadcasting the Heat/Celtics Game 7 in Miami, Florida," the Moskowitz law firm wrote in a statement this morning. "The process server filmed the event to ensure there was no ambiguity like Shaq has been arguing in the FTX case, but after service, Mr. O'Neil had the process server kicked out of the Arena."
In addition to the FTX lawsuit, a second suit alleges that O'Neal and his son violated federal security laws after founding an NFT project called ASTRALS, before essentially abandoning it, according to a statement from the Moskowitz law firm.
The NFTs sold through the project should have been registered prior to offering, according to allegations in a legal complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Bloomberg reported.
"We saw on Sunday that Shaq was announcing the Heat/Celtics game from the podium in our Arena and we also saw him walking around the arena a few times to go visit Pat Riley across the court," Moskowitz said in the statement. "Therefore, we just planned to serve him at last night's game."
"Our process server walked up to the platform, and you can see on tv, many Heat fans were standing right next to the TV booth and he saw Shaq and gave him both sets of papers," he continued.
Representation for O'Neal did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
In perhaps the biggest twist of irony, this all went down in the former FTX Arena — the Miami Heat's home arena that named after the crypto exchange in June 2021, before becoming the Kaseya Center this past April.