Nelly Gets A Piece Of

[Gotti......Xl]

Nelly Gets A Piece Of The Bobcats
By Mike Winslow
Date: 7/20/2004 12:40 am

NBA expansion team Charlotte Bobcats announced today that rapper Nelly is now a part-owner of the team.

Nelly joins the ranks of owners that include Bob Johnson, the team’s majority owner and billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), Hugh McColl Jr., former CEO of Bank of America and others.

"This is a great opportunity for both the Bobcats and Nelly," Johnson said. "Nelly is a great entertainer and a smart businessman and those two traits will serve us well as we prepare to tip off our inaugural season this fall."

Nelly, who has already snagged three Grammy’s and sold tens of millions of records, said that owning a part of the team was one of the biggest achievements of his career.

"To be able to make this move with Bob Johnson and to be a part of the first-ever minority owned professional sports franchise in history is a great opportunity,” Nelly said. "Bob and I share the same commitment to diversity and we are both self-made, having worked up from the very bottom to reach where we are today."

Shortly, Nelly will drop two separate albums, one called Sweat and the other named Suit