NBA top Shaquille O’Neal was recently at a jewelry store near Atlanta and he ended up buying an engagement ring – but it wasn’t that he could propose to anyone. The former Laker saw a man buy a ring and offered to buy it for him.
The gesture was captured on camera and the video quickly went viral. Shaq is cunningly spotted pulling out his credit card and handing it to the shop assistant while the stranger prepares to pay. The two shake hands and then posed for a photo.
The basketball star turned sports commentator spoke on Tuesday night about a gift during the NBA aftershow on TNT. “This happened yesterday. I was in Zales looking for new earrings, and I saw a man,” Shaq told his co-hosts.
After some joking about the hall-of-famer still going to run errands herself, Shaq told his co-hosts what happened next. “I saw the man, he was just so shy. He said, ‘Hey, how much do I owe to pay off the ring.’ ”
That’s when Shaq ducked in and offered to hide it.
“This is something I do every day,” Shaq said, adding that he and his mother recently made furniture purchases and offered to pay for a mother who had an autistic daughter. ‘I make people happy. So when I leave the house I just try do a good deed,” he said.
Shaq said the man who bought the ring was a “young child, a hardworking man” and the ring was inactive. ‘I said,’ You know what, tell your girlfriend I got it. Take care of her. “And at first he didn’t want to take it,” Shaq said. He told the man not to worry, he does it all the time.
“I just try to make people smile,” he said.