Shaquille O’Neal gifts washer and dryer to family at Home Depot

Basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal surprised a family he randomly came across in a store with new appliances.

While filming a video for his rap song “I Know I Got It” at a Las Vegas-area Home Depot, O’Neal was greeted by two women, one of whom said they were from Venezuela. He asked what the women were buying, and they said a washer and dryer.

“OK, I’m gonna pay for it,” he said casually, as he gestured for them to go show him which one they wanted.

The two surprised fans burst out into giddy exclamations. A video posted to social media by online audio and video company Hot Freestyle then shows them picking out their washer-dryer set. It also shows the 7-foot-1-inch former NBA all-star and sportscaster picking up a little boy and gently swinging him from side to side.

You can see the whole video from @HotFreestyle here.

O’Neal is known for his random acts of kindness, as commenters on multiple Twitter threads have pointed out.

His good deeds include paying off a young man’s balance on an engagement ring, buying furniture for the mother of an autistic child, leaving generous tips to restaurant servers, giving a laptop to a Best Buy customer and making sure a teenager with size 23 feet got the shoes he needed.

In a 2015 interview with Graham Bensinger, he said it was his parents, neither of whom made a lot of money, who taught him to be giving.

“If you ever make it big time, make sure you help those in need,” O’ Neal recalled his father telling him after giving a bag of burgers to a homeless veteran by the side of the road. The former NBA player also talked about how at Thanksgiving they’d go collect leftover Army rations and blankets to give out to the homeless.

“I try to make every day a meaningful moment for a fan, and especially a kid,” O’Neal told People in 2022.

O’Neal later posted the video he made in Home Depot on social media, saying, “This gotta be the first music video filmed at @The Home Depot.”

In it, you can see the small boy he was swinging in the video, as well as one of the women who he bought the washer and dryer for. He also references a recently viral social media sensation, The Home Depot girl.

He didn’t spot the popular employee, but he did make one family very happy.