It will be a great story to tell their grandkids someday.
As a man stood at the counter in the McDonough Zales store, asking how much it will cost to pay off an engagement ring, NBA icon and all-around great guy Shaquille O’Neal hands the cashier his credit card.
“The guy just came in ... young guy ... he was a hard-working guy,” O’Neal told his colleagues on TNT. The young man wanted to put the ring on layaway and pay in installments. “I said, you know what, tell your girlfriend I got it. I’ll take care of it.
“At first he didn’t want to take it, saying ‘Nah, I can’t do that,” O’Neal continued. “I told him don’t worry about it; I do it all the time. I’m just trying to make people smile.”
O’Neal has a jewelry line at Zales and said he was in the store looking for earrings.
This isn’t the first time he’s treated a stranger. He said whenever he’s out, he tries to do something nice for someone, even buying furniture for a woman and her autistic daughter.
One person commented on the Instagram post that “@shaq is amazing! He bought all 3 of my boys iPads at Best Buy! He’s so funny in person and such and awesome being!”
O’Neal’s generosity is well-known not just in Atlanta.
When a Louisiana high school needed nearly $20,000 to update its weight room, O’Neal paid the bill.
When a 7-year-old Houston girl was killed by a drive-by shooter, O’Neal paid the bill for her funeral, as he did for a 13-year-old Forest Park boy who accidentally shot himself and died.
When a 12-year-old shooting victim in Atlanta couldn’t leave the hospital because his home wasn’t equipped for him, O’Neal paid the bill for a year on a new home, including furniture and televisions.
In 2016, when news got out that a 6-foot-11-inch, 275-pound homeless man was having trouble finding shoes and clothes, O’Neal and former Atlanta Hawks star Dikembe Mutombo gifted him bins of shoes and outfits.
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