Shaq helps fill kids’ backpacks, dreams in visits to NLV

A student reacts Wednesday, July 9, 2025, after receiving a backpack from basketball great Shaquille O’Neil during a Boys & Girls Club of Southern Nevada back-to-school event at Staples in North Las Vegas. Photo by: Wade Vandervort

Basketball Hall-of-Famer Shaquille O’Neal continued his friendship with the Boys & Girls Club of Southern Nevada this week when he encouraged local youngsters to follow their goals, then helped them stock up on school supplies.

At a Staples in North Las Vegas on Wednesday, he dropped markers and binders into backpacks as children from kindergarten through high school collected the back-to-school goodies they will need when classes resume next month. Before that, he sat with kids from a Boys & Girls Club clubhouse on Carey Avenue in the heart of North Las Vegas as they showed off vision boards — scrapbook-like projects illustrating their interests and goals.

One boy wanted to be a race car driver. Two brothers aspired to be professional basketball players.

Krismary V. ­— the Boys & Girls Club doesn’t give out full names — wants to be a fashion designer.

She says she likes to dress up, and she wants to help other people dress up too. She most admires luxury brands like Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Dior, and aspires to create streetwear.

O’Neal urged her to keep it up.

“He told us to work hard and never give up on our dreams and what we want to become in life,” she said.

O’Neal is a Boys & Girls Club alumnus, spending his formative years at a clubhouse in Newark, N.J. He has served on the Boys & Girls Club national board. As a longtime valley homeowner and a businessman with Nevada ties — he is behind the restaurant concept Big Chicken, which has two locations in Las Vegas — his philanthropy benefiting local kids in particular is well-established.

Last week, he celebrated the groundbreaking of a youth center that will bear his name on the northeast side, near East Lake Mead and North Lamb boulevards. That project, a 17,000-square-foot joint facility for the Boys & Girls Club of Southern Nevada and Communities In Schools, will be a comprehensive center for infants through college-aged young adults. It is scheduled to open in late 2026 or early 2027.

In addition to the upcoming clubhouse, the Shaquille O’Neal Foundation has previously refurbished the basketball courts at the Doolittle Center in the Historic Westside and installed an artificial turf field at the Boys & Girls Club off Boulder Highway.

Andy Bischel, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Southern Nevada, said O’Neal was a thoughtful partner who asks the organization what it needs and how he can help rather than dictating what he will do.

O’Neal’s latest appearances coincided with his brand partnership with electronics giant Epson, which donated the high-tech printers the students used to make their vision boards. The Staples that hosted the shopping spree was filled with visuals of O’Neal, including one of him outfitted as a larger-than-life astronaut soaring over the sales floor. His stop at the store was a happy surprise to the hundred-plus children who had been bused over to shop.

Bischel said the older kids who quickly got the hang of the new donated printers helped the younger ones complete their projects. It was a kind of parallel to the towering basketball icon among the children.

“Bigs help the littles, and they all work together as a team,” Bischel said.