Making a Dream Come True

There was a minimal amount of hype for this Shaq Showdown at Staples Center, probably because it was such a mismatch.

Trevor Hansen didn’t stand a chance. Then again, O’Neal is 7 feet and Hansen checks in at a self-described “4-foot-something.”

As you could imagine, O’Neal overwhelmed him. Took Hansen’s breath away?

“No, just my heart,” Hansen said.

It skipped a beat.

The story of how Hansen came to stand face-to-face -- well, face-to-thigh, really -- with O’Neal is a mixture of determination and a little blind luck.

Hansen, a 7-year-old from Santa Barbara, is battling rhabdomyosarcoma, a fast-growing cancer that can strike children under 15. His father was taking him for a walk on the beach while the Clippers were at training camp at Santa Barbara City College in October when they bumped into Barry Hecker, the Clipper director of player personnel. Hecker started chatting with the youngster and invited him to come to practice.

Hansen is in the middle of a 42-week chemotherapy program. He has his share of low-energy days. That night happened to be one of them, he couldn’t stay long.

He did remember a guy who wore No. 42 coming up to say hi. That would be Elton Brand, and that wouldn’t be any surprise to anyone who knows him.

The Clippers sent Hansen some paraphernalia, and Hansen had his Clipper jersey on as he told the story from a seat on the Clippers’ bench before Friday night’s game against the Miami Heat. He paused when Bobby Simmons came up to ask, “Hey Trevor, how you doing?”

Hansen got right down to business:

“Will you sign this?” he said, handing Simmons a game program.

Since he first met the players, Hansen has followed the Clippers closely -- when he isn’t watching “Pimp My Ride” on MTV. And through their correspondence the Clippers learned that O’Neal was Hansen’s favorite player. He has two pairs of O’Neal’s brand of shoes and one word to describe why Shaq’s his favorite player: “Huge.”

Hansen wasn’t too distraught when the Lakers traded O’Neal to Miami in July.

“I think he was OK,” said Shawn Castagnola, Hansen’s aunt and legal guardian. “I was more upset about that.”

There were serious developments for Hansen last summer. His legs hurt him, but the doctors thought it was just growing pains. After the pain wouldn’t stop, on July 4 he was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma. It’s a highly malignant cancer that forms in the necks or stomachs of children. The tumor crushed the tube from his kidney to his bladder and was so large the doctors had to wait until the radiation shrank it to operate. He had it removed last week.

The Clippers arranged for Hansen and his family to come to this Heat game, 20 days after O’Neal made his celebrated return to Los Angeles against the Lakers and Kobe Bryant on Christmas.

There were some days when it didn’t look as if Hansen would have the strength to get to the game. Then Mother Nature tried to block the path, sending down torrential rain and mudslides and forcing road closures on the route from Santa Barbara. That wasn’t about to be a deterrent. The Clippers arranged for a helicopter to transport Hansen, Castagnola, her 11-year-old son, Anthony, and her boyfriend, Matt Oroz, to Van Nuys, were they were driven to Staples.

For the 100 paces from the Clipper bench to a seat on a cart outside the Clipper locker room, Hansen hopped on Oroz’s back. He waited patiently as O’Neal finished an interview outside the Heat’s locker room, then stood up as the giant walked over to greet him.

O’Neal signed everything that came his way, and told Hansen, “You hang in there, all right?”

And he had a little more advice for Hansen: “You stay away from those girls. I hear you have a lot of girlfriends.”

They debated over exactly how many, before Hansen proudly said, “29.”

“Twenty-nine?” an amazed O’Neal said. “You’re a player.”

O’Neal was in full charm mode. This is the other side of him, when MDE stands for Many Do-good Endeavors.

“It’s something that my parents taught me to do,” O’Neal said on his way back to the locker room. “Me and my dad used to do stuff like that in high school. Dale Brown [his college coach at Louisiana State] used to take us to do stuff like that. It’s just something that I do. My job is just making them smile. Hopefully the diagnosis they get from the doctors isn’t correct.

“I remember one time, the guy had a couple of days left. He lived a couple of months after.

“Hopefully I can bring a smile to his face.”

Mission accomplished.

Hansen has been in and out of the hospital since the summer. Sometimes he has chemotherapy five days in a row. The bicycle Castagnola bought him hasn’t been used for more than two months. Her co-workers paid for Hansen to go on a Disney cruise; he wasn’t well enough to take it.

The good news is the doctors were able to remove the entire tumor and said there were no live cells in it. And his eyebrows are starting to grow back.

Hansen tends to spend more time thinking about what he’s going to say than actually saying the words. He was pretty quick to sum up this evening, when he met his favorite player and then devoured cotton candy as he watched O’Neal play his favorite team: “Nothing like the other days.”

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com To read previous columns by Adande go to latimes.com/adande.