Los Angeles Lakers Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal is not only known as one of the most dominant players in the history of basketball, but also one of the NBA’s all time great personalities. As an analyst on TNT, he helps to bring consistently entertaining coverage of the sport.
But in the real world, O’Neal has been known to help those in need on several occasions. A recent story out of Florida is no different.
O’Neal pulled over on the side of a highway to help a woman who was stranded with a flat tire. While the woman waited for Alachua County deputies to arrive on the scene, O’Neal waited with her in a random act of kindness.
More details from the scene can be found here, as he reportedly stopped after he saw the woman’s tire blow out while driving near Gainesville.
In the video, O’Neal can be seen playing in the grass with the child of the stranded woman, as caught by the dashboard camera of the deputies who arrived on the scene. He then greets the officer with a fist bump and takes them over to the woman in need, explaining their situation on the way.
This action from O’Neal is not some grand gesture, but it does show the type of person that he is when the cameras aren’t on him. At the time of pulling over to help the woman, there was no dashboard camera to prove that he even did that.
In fact, without that camera, the general public would have never known about this. Acts of kindness like this may not be a life changer for O’Neal, but they certainly will resonate with those he comes in contact with.
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This flat tire moment is not even the first time this year that O’Neal has been in the news for going out of his way to help someone in need.
In May, he offered to cover the funeral expenses for 18-year-old Floridian football prospect Dexter Rentz, who died tragically in a drive by shooting incident. Rentz was from Ocoee, Fla., located just outside of Orlando.
So long as O’Neal has the platform and the wealth that he has, it’s likely that he will continue to help people in need. That’s simply the type of human he is and how he wants to be perceived following his Hall of Fame career.
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