The thought of entering local politics never crossed Ostertag\u2019s mind \u2014 until Mount Vernon residents began telling him he\u2019d make a good mayor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like politics. I hate politicians. They\u2019re vile. I don\u2019t see it that way for me. I\u2019m just here to try to do the things people ask,\u201d Ostertag said. The municipal position is nonpartisan, and Ostertag has not publicly given a party affiliation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis town has come a long way in 10 years. When I first moved here, it was dead. Paint falling off the buildings. You could park on the town square 24\/7, 365 days a year with no problem. Now on Fridays and Saturdays, you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ostertag has helped make Mount Vernon more vibrant and wants to ensure it doesn\u2019t backslide.\u00a0That\u2019s why a former NBA player who made $48 million in career earnings has agreed to become the mayor \u2014 an unpaid position \u2014\u00a0 for the next two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of people who are asking to get code enforcement done,\u201d Ostertag said. \u201cGet people to mow their yards. Get junk out of the front of their yards, whether it be a car, a trailer, a motorcycle. There are some things we have to work on there.\u201d<\/p>\n
On May 11, Ostertag was officially sworn in as Mount Vernon\u2019s mayor. He wore a short-sleeved, black polo T-shirt with the name of his restaurant stitched across the front during the proceedings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will never wear a suit,\u201d Ostertag assured voters in a Facebook post<\/a>\u00a0that night.<\/p>\n During his campaign, Ostertag told Mount Vernon\u2019s residents that he\u2019d be more communicative with them than his predecessor. He also pledged to be more supportive of small business owners. Food truck vendors there are required to pay a $400 annual fee, which Ostertag wants to eliminate. Additionally, Ostertag wants local farmers to be able to sell wherever they\u2019d like without owing any upfront costs to the city.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had some really great momentum,\u201d Shannon said. \u201cThen, the past couple of years, things kind of stalled a little bit in terms of things that make Mount Vernon great. The small-town events. The things on the square. Farmer\u2019s markets.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Former NBA center Greg Ostertag, in addition to being the new mayor of Mount Vernon, Texas, referees youth basketball games, works as a substitute teacher and owns a sports bar. (Jesse Bruner \/ Special to The Capital-Journal \/ USA Today via Imagn Images)<\/p>\n The goal is to make Mount Vernon as event-friendly as possible for its residents and the visiting Dallas-area crowd. Ostertag grew up in Duncanville, a Texas high school sports powerhouse a short drive south of Dallas\u2019 urban core.<\/p>\n The Duncanville varsity boys basketball program has won six state championships in the state\u2019s largest classification. Ostertag was the star player on the Panthers\u2019 first title team in 1991.<\/p>\n That year, the Panthers had three rules.<\/p>\n \u201cRule one was to throw the ball to Greg,\u201d said Sam Lowe, one of Duncanville\u2019s guards. \u201cRule two was to remember to throw the ball to Greg. Rule three was if you don\u2019t throw the ball to Greg, go to the bench.\u201d<\/p>\n Duncanville had a 37-2 record. In the state championship game, Ostertag singlehandedly outscored Duncanville\u2019s opponent<\/a> before going to the bench for good because the game was so lopsided<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ostertag was a well-rounded athlete who excelled in baseball, hockey and football, but he grew so much that basketball became his future. Lowe remembered Ostertag as a \u201ccountry kid.\u201d One Saturday, the two of them played golf with some teammates. Ostertag whipped out a shotgun from his bag of clubs.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wants to start shooting at squirrels on the golf course,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018No. You are going to get us arrested. We are in the playoffs. We can\u2019t do anything stupid.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ostertag went on to play college ball at Kansas. As a junior, he averaged 10.3 points, 8.8 rebounds and 2.8 blocks. He left the school as the Jayhawks\u2019 all-time leader in blocked shots.<\/p>\n The Jazz selected Ostertag with the 28th pick in the 1995 NBA Draft. With the gargantuan Texan as a supporting piece alongside John Stockton and Karl Malone, the Jazz reached the NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998. Ostertag spent 10 of his 11 NBA seasons in Utah before retiring in 2006 at 32.<\/p>\n \n One of Ostertag\u2019s best statistical NBA seasons was 1996-97, when he averaged 7.3 points and 7.3 rebounds and started 70 of 77 games on a Utah Jazz team featuring John Stockton and Karl Malone. (Rocky Widner \/ NBAE via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Ostertag attempted an NBA comeback in 2011, but it was short-lived. He tipped the scales at more than 300 pounds. He played in 11 games with the Texas Legends of the NBA Development League (now the G League), then called it quits again.<\/p>\n In those years, Ostertag felt a sense of aimlessness. He had gone through a divorce and struggled when the structure that sports had given him all his life was gone. He decided it was the right time to move back to Texas and buy some land.<\/p>\n Mount Vernon\u2019s population then was approximately 2,500. The \u201ccountry kid\u201d could hunt and fish all he wanted there.<\/p>\n But moving to the tiny Texas town wasn\u2019t just about getting away. It was as much about becoming a part of something. Running Tag\u2019s, substitute teaching, officiating games and taking care of his animals fill his time. Now, he\u2019s become Mount Vernon\u2019s volunteer mayor on top of it all.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing that has been a demon for him was a lack of purpose,\u201d Shannon said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t really feel like he had a purpose or was bringing value because his life had completely changed.<\/p>\n \u201cI think moving to Mount Vernon and becoming more involved in this community really helped shape his purpose, not as an athlete but as a human. More than anything, that\u2019s the change I\u2019ve seen in him. This little town has kind of made the second chapter of his life pretty amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n In January 2002, Ostertag received a call from his sister. Amy, who was diabetic, needed a new kidney. She asked Greg if he would be willing to donate his.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018All right. Let\u2019s do it tomorrow,\u2019\u201d Ostertag said.<\/p>\n Six months later, doctors at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas performed a successful transplant. For Ostertag, the worst parts involved the urinalysis tests he had to perform, which required him to chug water and refrain from urinating for hours.<\/p>\n He made a quick recovery and was able to play in 81 regular-season games (and start 74) for the Jazz in 2002-03. The kidney transplant allowed Amy to live 17 more years. She died in 2019. Amy could be sweet or acidic, depending on the day, Ostertag said. The last two times he spoke to her on the phone, he hung up on her.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t being mean,\u201d Ostertag said. \u201cShe knew I wasn\u2019t going to take her s\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n Amy was especially close with Ostertag\u2019s youngest daughter, whom she took to the circus. His willingness to give his sister an organ was part of what initially drew Shannon to him: the inherent gentleness inside his massive, heavily tattooed frame.<\/p>\n Greg and Shannon found each other on an online dating site. They met in Las Vegas for their first date. He showed up wearing basketball shorts and a Chewbacca T-shirt. They had dinner, then walked around a casino floor.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom that night, it was perfect,\u201d Shannon said. \u201cNever ran out of things to talk about. Got along from the very beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n Shannon grew up in San Diego and spent most of her career in digital marketing. She never envisioned a rural lifestyle for herself. Now, she can\u2019t imagine living anywhere else than Mount Vernon. She helps run the day-to-day operation at Tag\u2019s, as well as her husband\u2019s social media accounts.<\/p>\n Shannon is well aware of the bigger-picture issues that could impact East Texas in the coming years. In Sulphur Springs, a town 24 miles away from Mount Vernon, development is underway on one of the largest artificial intelligence data centers in the country. If legislation moves forward, East Texas could soon become a major domestic supplier of lithium, the alkali metal used in rechargeable batteries. There is anxiety about the fresh water supply, too, as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex creeps outward.<\/p>\n Shannon hopes that Mount Vernon can face that change and remain a place where her children want to plant roots of their own.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many things that are happening in East Texas,\u201d Shannon said. \u201cI have no idea what the future holds for us. But I can tell you I hope it stays a place our kids want to come back to and families return to. \u2026 I hope this is a place where they might go off to college, but they come back to and raise their children.\u201d<\/p>\n To do that, Mayor Ostertag knows he needs Mount Vernon to remain on the upswing. When he arrived, buildings in the town square were peeling with paint. That area now teems with life on Friday and Saturday nights.\u00a0Ostertag wants to make sure the progress Mount Vernon has made over the last 11 years isn\u2019t lost.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d rather sit in my truck on my property and watch my animals,\u201d Ostertag said. \u201cBut they asked me, so here I am. I got a lot to learn. And I\u2019m always out and about. I already have people asking me, \u2018Hey, can we do this?\u2019 I can tell them, \u2018We\u2019ll look into it.\u2019 And that\u2019s all I can really say. If you have an issue, bring it in front of the council and we\u2019ll go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOUNT VERNON, Texas \u2014 Greg Ostertag has two camels on his farm in East Texas. Norman and Harold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4621,2764,6400,27,29,28,6406],"class_list":["post-326962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-culture","tag-kansas-jayhawks","tag-sacramento-kings","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-utah-jazz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2025-07-11T142617Z_837351414_MT1USATODAY26622567_RTRMADP_3_GREG-OSTERTAG-COMES-BACK-ON-THE-COURT-AS-.jpeg\")
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