What if Shaq had been traded to Cleveland

The Cavs were great on offense in Game 5 (50%FG), and pretty great in Game 1 (.489%FG). But their respective shooting percentages in Games 2-4 were: .455%, .372%, and .448%. Now considering they’re playing Orlando, which is a good defensive team, I wouldn’t say that they’ve been bad in any game except Game 3, but I wouldn’t say they’ve been “great” either, particularly their 3P shooting which is down almost 10% from their season average. If anything, they’ve simply been “solid.”

I would agree, however, that their main problem in this series has been their defense, both on the pick and roll and in the paint. I mean, Dwight Howard is shooting a mind boggling .645% for the series. Some of the percentage is surely attributable to the pick and roll but much of it is also attributable to the fact that the Cavs simply do not have any one who can guard him in the low post (which is saying a lot b/c he isn’t really that effective of a post up player).

So if you add Shaq and he takes Z’s minutes (which would have to be the case, since you surely could not play them together), then what you end up with is better interior scoring and better interior defense along with a marginal difference on pick and roll D (Z is horrible as well). Considering how close this series has been, that might be enough to push the Cavs over the top. Because I don’t think Shaq could make their pick and roll D any worse, so it’s at least reasonable to argue that whatever gains the Cavs got with his interior scoring and D would all be upside. A just a little bit of upside would probably have been enough to have titled this series the otherw way.

Of course, this all assumes that Shaq would actually help the Cleveland offense, which I’m not sure is true. He would probably help get more open 3s, but his his lack of mid-range game would make him useless when the Cavs switch to their 1-4 offensive sets, since essentially he’d just be in Lebron’s way. Plus, having Shaq in the playoffs always makes a team vulnerable to the good’ol Hack-a-Shaq.

So while I’d agree with you that’s its probably too conclusive to say that not trading for Shaq cost the Cavs a championship, I would not agree that Shaq’s incompetence on the pick and roll has anything to do with it. The Cavs are already so incompetent on the pick and roll I doubt that he could make things much worse. Plus, his interior D would probably help. But I would question how much his offense would really help the Cavs, as a space-eater like Shaq seems somewhat incompatible with the Lebron iso show.

Anyone who feels the Cavs would not be in better shape with Shaq (acquired under either of the 2 proposed scenarios) in the lineup is truly an idiot who has no business so much as watching basketball.

That’s just not cool. Once you start talking like that the whole point to having a social forum to discuss basketball goes out the window. It becomes about nothing but personal attacks and “being right.”

That said, I don’t think anyone was saying (or at least I wasn’t) Shaq would certainly not make the Cavs better. The question at hand is would he make them sufficiently better so that they would win the championship this year.

If it is idiocy to speculate (not assert but rather just say it is reasonably possible) that inserting (two months before the playoffs) one of the most dominant personalities and ball-dominant players in the league who also can’t run or shoot into a rather efficient offense based on spot-up shooting and another extremely dominant personality who is also extremely ball-dominant might cause that offense as much harm as benefit, than I am proud, deeply proud, of my idiocy.

Both Wallace and Shaq have expiring contracts and Shaq’s is much bigger and he’s a much much better player of the two.

Why would the Suns trade one expiring contract for a smaller one? Getting Wallace and Sasha and then cutting Sasha would only net the Suns $5.5m which isn’t enough to move Shaq for what’s left of Big Ben and the Cavs don’t have any other interesting pieces to trade either.