BEIJING - School officials in southwest China have been slammed for confiscating basketballs that iconic NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal signed and gave to four teenage boys, state press said Friday.

The seven-foot-one O?Neal distributed the basketballs to the students on Tuesday while visiting a region in Sichuan province that was hit by a devastating earthquake in May last year, the China Daily reported.

Officials at the school in Mianyang city later took the balls away from the boys, resulting in a confrontation with the families of the teenagers who protested unfair treatment, it said.

"I never thought it would be like this," the paper quoted Shaq as saying. "I can imagine how disappointed the boys must be."

To compensate for the unhappiness, the Cleveland Cavalier centre signed four more balls and saw to it that they were delivered to the four boys, the paper reported.

"I want to tell them that I like them, and I don't want them to cry over this," O'Neal said.

In an online survey by the state-run Xinhua news agency, 90 percent of 3,200 people polled said the school "had no right to confiscate O'Neal's gifts to the students."

Online comments accused the officials of taking the balls so they could give them to their own children, an accusation the school denied, the report said.

They insisted the balls were going to be used as exhibits for the school.

O'Neal -- who earlier this month signed a contract to play with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers -- has visited China numerous times and signed several endorsement deals here.

During a visit this week to China's famed Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of Chinese kung fu, O'Neal said he was hoping to improve his martial arts skills and bring them to the basketball court.