To be honest, I’ve expected this day to come ever since word of the Cavs and Suns discussing a deal for Shaq re-surfaced a couple weeks ago.
Shaq is moving to Cleveland for the ‘09-‘10 NBA season.
I’m excited for the city of Cleveland, which is now a trending topic on Twitter (as of 11:40pm PDT), and will have probably as big of a presence as it’s ever had on the national stage with two of the biggest stars in the sports world - perhaps in all of history - walking its streets. This could reinvigorate the community. It will help the economy, if only in tangential, finite ways.
Those thoughts all fill me with an exuberance that makes me wish it was October, and the season was starting.
But am I excited as a fan of the Cavs?
I have mixed feelings.
I know that Shaq helps the team in one major area - guarding low post presences like Da-wight Howard one-on-one. I’m going to assume Shaq will be highly productive as a rebounder and scorer playing limited minutes a night. He was a 20-10 guy last year with a PER of 22.3 and a WS of 8.2. In comparison, Z had a PER of 18.0 and a WS of 5.4. I think it will be a nightmare for teams to have to worry about both Bron and Shaq on offense, if for no other reason than the simple fact that both players command double and sometimes triple teams (Shaq may be 37, but he’s also 7’3”).
And then there’s a certain part of me that’s stuck in an elongated sigh.
I kinda wanted the Cavs to do it without Shaq.
This feels like an attempt to buy a championship, to rent a game-changing player for a year and see if the previous trend continues. Put Shaq with a dominant perimeter player - win a championship.
Put Shaq with Kobe - championship. Put Shaq with Wade - championship.
(Note: the Suns didn’t have that player. Nash could be dominating, but not in a create-your-own-shot sort of way.)
Forgive me for being not entirely excited about copying the same formula in Cleveland.
I like it when things are difficult. I want the challenge. Finding new ways to do things excites me.
This, my friends, my brother, my parents know, is what I do.
This is why, even if Dan Gilbert hoists the Larry O’Brien trophy next year in front of Shaq as he hugs LeBron and Rasheed Wallace throws his headband into the crowd (I’m getting ahead of myself on that last part), some portion of me is going to wish “we” did it on our own.
A part of me is going to wish LeBron did it, with his guys, his way, not like Wade and Kobe did it.
I don’t think I’ll feel like the championship really belongs to the city of Cleveland, to my dad, to my grandpa, to all of the people who passed away before their time, without ever getting to follow a parade route down Euclid.
Part of it will belong to a stop-gap measure named Shaq. A rental car, brought in to run a year long race. A player that helped the team and its native born superstar get to their destination before disappearing into the night, never to be heard from again.
I want a dynasty. I’m greedy. I don’t care. We need to be.
This is a team with a 24 year old human being, who is going to be cemented in time as the best player the game of basketball’s ever known when his career ends, and the organization is making a rent-a-cop kind of move.
I realize this point of view isn’t entirely rational. We all know there are no guarantees. We know how difficult it is to win a championship, how an organization has to do everything it can to maximize its potential any time it has a chance because that chance can dissipate in an instant, with one broken bone or torn ACL, one unfortunate bounce of the ball or blow of the whistle.
Considering all of that, it’s hard to argue with this decision from the Cavs standpoint. It’s even harder to rail against it when you consider what the team gave up - a player who wanted to retire and a regressing wingman, who was more useful to analysts wanting to illustrate how much the Cavs’ roster had changed since 2007 when they made it to the Finals than to the team itself. Perhaps remarkably, it’s even harder than that to be upset about the trade when you consider just how flexible this makes the Cavs in the summer of 2010, when the biggest expiring contract in the NBA will come off their salary cap.
But that’s how I feel tonight.
We’ll talk again a year from now.
*M*
