THE FUSE

In 1999, a 27-year-old basketball player wrote a check for $250,000 to a startup most people had never heard of. The player was Shaquille O'Neal, then the most physically dominant athlete in American sports, and the startup was Google. The investment was the kind of thing that should have been a footnote in a jock's financial life, a lucky dart thrown at a dot-com dartboard. Instead it became the first clear signal that the biggest man in basketball intended to think like an owner, not just an earner.