DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Shaq to the Cavs talks heating up again

Just saw on CNN Headline News that Shaq found out he was traded on his Twitter page.

I wonder if Shaq can fulfill his dream of being a sherriff's deputy up in Cleveland.

I was reading on another site where they were coming up w/ new nicknames and one poster came up with " Witness Protection "

Perfect!

Welcome to Cleveland Shaq!

I prefer...The Big Cuyahoga

It's a nice trade but it should have happened last February.

Hard to argue with the trade. Especially when you give up a player who is going to retire and one who gave us next to nothing the entire year. Plus, we somehow kept the #30 pick in all this?

I mean, we traded Ben Wallace and Sasha for a guy who averaged 18 and 9 last year while shooting 61% from the floor. If he can give us two thirds of that it will be a great trade. Not only that but having Z will save both guys legs throughout the season.

Personally, I think this is the big diversion for our draft day trade. My guess is this deal was on the table since February and Kerr said he wanted to wait till draft day. The bonus being it will be the prevailing talk throughout the day, giving Ferry some time to line up a trade in to the lottery without a lot of attention.

Should be an interesting day. The biggest thing Shaq does IMO is help repair the teams damaged psyche. If anyone thought they saw the last of the pre-game antics, think again.

No kidding .. we have a pre-game antic all-star team now.

This trade is amazing on so many levels. As mentioned before, we basically gave up NOTHING to get him. Essentially we swapped Ben Wallace for Shaq, and that's a HECK of an upgrade.

Z and Shaq will give us a ton of options in the middle. Z can be brought in if we want to stretch the floor and shoot. Shaq can be brought in to clog the middle. Both can be used to spell each other and keep them healthy for the playoffs. Heck, Shaq could be shelved till the playoffs if we need to, and we'd still probably win 60+ games, like we did this year.

Most importantly Shaq provides us that one key element we were missing last year. That force in the front court. Now, teams with Howard and Gasol don't have thier way down low. Teams with guys like Rondo or Kobe can't drive straight into the middle without expecting some major resistance (other than Lebron backside help).

Now lets get some power fowards!

Looks like Charlie Villanueva is twittering that he wants to come to Cleveland as well. Also on ESPN this morning they said that the Cavs were also about to get a deal done with the Hornets to get Tyson Chandler, a much younger Center. They chose to get Shaq because his deal is over with before 2010 summer and Chandler had another yr left on the deal. Personally I would have loved to get a Chandler on the team, being my name as well, but what do you guys think? He isnt the offensive threat that shaq is but more athletic, perhaps could have helped with the wing players of the Magic.

He could be the new Big Mistak.........errr, nevermind.

LeBron needs Shaq’s fury for ride to Finals
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
7 hours, 9 minutes ago


Perhaps nothing inspires Shaquille O’Neal(notes) as does the prospect of vengeance and vindication. Yes, LeBron James’(notes) best chance to be an NBA champion is born of that relentless rage. The Cleveland Cavaliers have laid it all out for Shaq: Go through Dwight Howard(notes) and Stan Van Gundy, and get us to Kobe Bryant(notes) and Phil Jackson. Here comes Shaq to the Cavaliers, and in his mind, here comes hell to pay for slights real and imagined.


Shaq is the gift that never stops giving for David Stern and the NBA. He’s 37 years old and past his prime, and yet there are no major moments on the NBA calendar when he isn’t still the biggest story of all. Yes, the Rent-a-Shaq tour hits Cleveland now and the commissioner is the most relieved man of all. His dream Finals – L.A. and Cleveland – could be the most anticipated in the NBA’s history.


Now, Shaq is salvation from the tedium of a lousy draft. He was the salvation in the Finals between his old teammates and coaches. He was the salvation of a lost All-Star weekend in Phoenix, where he did the dance of the Jabberwocky and raised a co-MVP trophy with Kobe. He is like the aging prom queen forever finding a younger beau for his arm: From Kobe to Dwyane Wade(notes) to LeBron now.


As Yahoo! Sports first reported, the trade came down in the late hours of Wednesday, when Cleveland GM Danny Ferry finally realized he couldn’t pry Vince Carter(notes) out of New Jersey for his expiring contracts and junk players. The Cavs didn’t do this trade without some reservation. “They aren’t sure how he’s going to roll with being LeBron’s sidekick,” says an executive source close to the Cavaliers’ front office. Yet, the Cavaliers made this trade without apology:


Whatever LeBron wants, LeBron gets.


Once LeBron told management he wanted to see Shaq on his side, well, what choice did they have?


“Great name, great presence – not nearly enough game left,” one Western Conference GM warned on Wednesday night.

Ferry had no choice. He has to pray the immensity of Shaq’s stature doesn’t grind with James. O’Neal did have a fabulous season at his advanced NBA age, but he was desperate to become relevant again come playoff time. When he’s been out of the playoffs these past two springs, Shaq has repeatedly popped off with rap, with Tweets, with half-joking malice.


For Shaq, the Suns were a chance to restore his value in the NBA, his standing as something more than a bitter, aging relic. He never did fit in Phoenix. His revival infringed on the freedom of Amare Stoudemire and Steve Nash(notes). As one Eastern Conference coach told me this week, “At Shaq’s age, it’s still too much getting his touches.”


How Shaq fits with the Cavaliers, with LeBron, is ever the intrigue. LeBron has never had to play with a persona, an ego. Forget his time with Team USA. It isn’t the same. LeBron doesn’t need to dominate the ball the way Kobe did, but he does need to dominate the conversation. Nevertheless, he’s probably watched enough of Zydrunas Ilgauskas(notes) getting thrown around by Howard in the conference finals to understand he’ll have to sacrifice some ego with Shaq, some face time.


The Rent-A-Shaq tour comes to Cleveland without much of a price paid. Perhaps the most dominant center in the NBA’s history came for two contracts the Suns might buy out, a second pick and $500,000. As one prominent agent said Wednesday. “Don’t blame Steve Kerr for this. That owner [Robert Sarver] will do anything to save a buck right now.” The Suns could save millions on the deal, but they don’t save face.


League executives were surprised Ferry closed the deal without having to give up the Cavaliers’ first-round choice in the draft. “I thought for sure Danny was resigned to giving them the 30th pick,” one rival GM said. “I’m surprised the Suns didn’t hold out a little longer.”

In the end, this trade was inevitable. The Cavaliers make the boldest move of the offseason, a deal they wanted to believe was unnecessary back at the trade deadline in February. The Cavaliers had the best record in basketball, the best defense and it turned out to be fool’s good. The Magic embarrassed them in the Eastern Conference finals, and LeBron James stomped into the summer without a handshake, without so much as a word of congratulations to Dwight Howard.

Now, LeBron goes and gets the biggest bully of all, Shaquille O’Neal, and brings him back to the gym for next season. The greatest storyline in the sport returns to relevance, with Shaquille O’Neal back in the chase for his fifth championship. Dwight and Stan, Kobe and Phil are waiting in the distance now, and Shaq is desperate to have the final word for them all.

The hate fuels his fury, inspires his journey and the Cavaliers need to stoke it all within Shaq. Here Shaq comes to Cleveland, here comes hell to pay.


http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-shaqlebron062509&prov=yhoo&type=lgns


That last sentence is the best line from the whole damn article!!!

Get us a young big athletic swingman who is a slasher and can play defense to come off the bench for Lebron when he rests. That should be the last piece of the puzzle.

OH and Stephen Curry. It's a long shot but Gibson is just too streaky.

I do not understand all the Curry hype, to me he is exactly Daniel Gibson.

Curry does a much better job of creating space for himself than Boobie..

I wanna get AV back and bring Artest to the party...

Starters: Mo, Artest, LB, AV, Shaq

Bench: DWest, Z, Boobie, Draft Pick, Hickson, D-Block..


WOW

Kinsey and cash to move up in the draft...

I like it but the Shaq trade alone does not get us past Orlando, Boston or LA. It helps but I'm not sure we win 7 against any of these teams yet. We still need another solid shooter and athletic big man. Shaq does nothing to improve our speed or transition D which is half of how Orlando killed us. I like it but it's still not enough.

Artest would be a great pick up. I hope he wouldn't be locker room poison but on the court he'd be perfect for us.

I've never understood why other Cavs fans love Andy so much. He's very replaceable...

What about a trade like this:

Kinsey+Hickson+cash for Yi Jianlian and the 11th pick? (it doesn't quite work in trade machine, but the contracts are all so small that I'm sure there's a way to swing it)

We get the outside shooting PF that we need to go alongside Shaq. They get the inside power PF they need alongside Lopez. Hickson has more promise, and is cheaper than Jianlian, which is why we get the 11th pick. We can then use that to pick up Williams/Henderson/DeRozan etc. which fixes our backup SG spot. Then we can still get a starting PF or starting SG (CV/Artest)

~Lyuokdea

In 6 meetings against Shaq, Howard has only averaged 16.7 PPG and just 8.5 shots per. Only once in 6 games did he score more then 20. That's why the trade was made.

Z couldn't eliminate one of Howard's offensive options and it killed us. Howard could bull rush Z down low or drive past him and shoot the hook. Shaq turns Howard in to a finesse player because he literally can't move him. If you force him to shoot 4-6 footers instead of two handed dunks and layups, he's not as effective. Plus, he can get Howard in to foul trouble at the other end....something a lot of people might overlook.

Shaq isn't going to a monster but he is going to be much better then what we currently have. I mean, think about all the centers in the NBA and where Shaq might slot. Even at 37, he's still probably one of the top 6 guys in the league at center. At 75% of his career peak, he's still better then 90% of the guys in the NBA.

Totally agree with you and LBJ. We don't need to blow this team up guys!!! We can't get Ron Artest AND Andy ... we don't have the cap room. I don't want to hear talk of trading West, etc to get newer players in here. We freaking won 66 games last year, and weren't all that far away from beating Orlando. Plus we match up better with LA than we do Orlando.

The worst thing we can do is knee-jerk, throw together a bunch of trades and cobble together a team that might look better on paper. Shaq solves our biggest hole ... a stopper in the middle. Outside of that, we don't really need anything else, other than maybe a taller perimeter defender.

We took a 66 win team, and upgraded Ben Wallace with Shaq ... do we really need to go ape-poopy with anything else?

Getting Artest for just the MLE seems a pretty tall order.

J/C..

There are a lot of things that can happen.. you guys keep saying this and that CAN"T happen... Guys, just so you know, with Shaq on board, we are now going to be looked at much different by free agents...

Look, the best way for this team to win a title is with Z and West coming off the bench..

For all we know, Andy picks up that 6 million dollar player option and waits to cash in big when every team has money next summer.. it's very early to tell what any one of these free agents will do..

With Artest, the one thing we have going for us (other than LB, obviously) is Mike Brown.. Artest and MB are tight from their days in Indiana... If I am Ferry/Gilbert, I tell MB to pick up the phone and tell Ronny to come get a ring. Sure, he would have to take less money, but to win a ring, who knows?

For all of you that are worried about Ron's attitude, you must not have been paying attention to the last few seasons.. I would guarantee he would fit in just fine.. he gets along with MB very well from their past, plus he has said in the past that he would like to play alongside LB...

Is this a longshot, yes.. but, I think there are a lot of possiblities now that Shaq is on board..

Ferry gets a bad rap from some but he essentially turned Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden in to Mo Williams, Delonte West and Shaq, all while maintaining our cap flexibility for 2010.

He's done an amazing job of reworking this team and putting it in a great position to win this / next year and also land another big free agent next to LeBron.

Oh boy...


I'm hearing Orlando is close to landing Vince Carter

However I heard Orlando is offering Pietrus, Alston and Lee