NBA Countdown: No. 2 Cleveland Cavaliers

[duncan228]

NBA Countdown: No. 2 Cleveland Cavaliers
SportingNews

Leading into the Oct. 27 season openers, Sporting News will preview each of the NBA teams, counting backward from its Sept. 25 Power Poll. For more great NBA content, order your copy of our Pro Basketball yearbook, or pick one up at a newsstand today.

By Larry Lage
Sporting News Yearbooks

Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, general manager Danny Ferry and, by extension, the whole championship-starved city have placed all their chips in the middle of the table.

They're all in.

The hand the Cavs knew they were going to have is now what they're holding, and it makes no sense to leave chips in their pockets. LeBron James can choose to be a free agent in 2010, and he kept his options open for next year by not re-signing when he could've this summer. Get ready to hold your breath, Cleveland. But if this is it, the Cavs are going out guns-a-blazin' and it'll be fun to watch.

Shaquille O'Neal, a win-now addition, is packing his backboard-rattling dunks and lane-clogging body. And, of course, LeBron's arsenal is as awesome as any player on the planet.

The Shaq splash addresses a glaring void that led to the Cavs losing a playoff series they were expected to win. The Orlando Magic ruined Cleveland's chance to get to the NBA Finals for the second time because they pounded the Cavs silly inside with center Dwight Howard. He won't have quite the same experience in the lane this season with the 7-1, 325-pound Shaq patrolling the paint.

"We knew we had to get bigger, especially if we're going to get past Orlando if we meet them again in the playoffs or if we end up playing the Lakers (in the Finals)," coach Mike Brown said. "And in the regular season, the teams that we had the most problem against had a lot of size, so that was a big thing we needed to address."

LeBron and Shaq can't do it alone, but Ferry's moves have produced some players to place around the superstars. Mo Williams, last year's key addition, proved to be a great go-to player in the franchise-record 66-win regular season, averaging nearly 18 points a game. But the 6-1 guard didn't deliver as a No. 2 option in the playoffs, making just 40.8 percent of his shots and 37.2 percent of his 3s. He is perfectly suited, however, to be the third option in an offense featuring Shaq and LeBron.

Brazilian power forward Anderson Varejao will help with his hustle, and if he can start making jumpers from a reasonable distance, he'll really be worth the $7 million per year he's now making over the next six seasons. Quietly, Ferry made LeBron's surrounding cast much better when he signed free agents Anthony Parker, Jamario Moon and Leon Powe. The 6-6 Parker was a double-digit scorer the past three seasons in Toronto, while Moon and Powe, both 6-8, have averaged nearly eight points a game the last two years. All three are solid veterans who can hold down the fort when the starters are taking a seat.

The Cavs have done just about all they can to not lose LeBron, building a 50,000-square-foot practice facility for him near his Ohio mansion, acquiring Shaq and filling a roster with about 10 players most teams in the NBA would want.

"We've been treating every season as a win-now season," Ferry said. "For this year, keeping the team together that won 66 games and adding Shaq, Parker and Moon to the mix is really exciting."

Fast facts
2008-09 record: 66-16
Last playoff: 2009 (lost in conference final)
Coach: Mike Brown

Burning question
Is Shaq all LeBron really needed?

The Cavaliers did a nice job addressing their undersized perimeter players by adding Jamario Moon and Anthony Parker, but ultimately, the success of this season rests on the ample shoulders of their biggest acquisition, center Shaquille O'Neal. One reason the Cavs struggled in last year's playoffs was that when their outside shots were not falling, they had no choice but to put the ball into LeBron James' hands and ask him to win game after game. Now, with O'Neal, the Cavs will have an inside option to take pressure off James. That should be enough to get them to the NBA Finals.
— Sean Deveney

View from the other bench
(an opponent breaks down the Cavs)

"The Cavs are kind of in a lose-lose situation this season. If they win a le, LeBron James might decide to leave because he gave Cleveland a championship and he isn't confident in how that team is going to look over the next five years. If they don't win a le, he can say, 'Cleveland, I gave you your chance. I'm out of here,' because he's not confident how that team will look over the next five years. …

"Shaquille O'Neal can't be in the long-term plan, and neither can Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Either way, who's LeBron's big man of the future if he stays? (Cleveland general manager) Danny Ferry hasn't signed a major free agent in his prime to play with LeBron. So, that gives LeBron an out."

Rookie to watch: G Danny Green

Green won't get a chance to have an impact this season, but the 6-6 guard from North Carolina was a good second-round pick who can score from outside.

Inside the numbers

23: Consecutive wins at home to start last season for the Cavs, the longest such streak since 1995-96, when Chicago reeled of 37 straight home wins to open the season and Orlando started with 33.
35.3: Points per game in the 2009 playoffs by LeBron James, the highest single-season playoff scoring average since Michael Jordan averaged 36.7 in the 1990 postseason.
61.0: Field goal percentage on two-point baskets by new Cav Shaquille O'Neal in 2008-09 with Phoenix, the best in the league. It was the ninth time in his 17-year career that O'Neal led the league in shooting inside the arc.

Additions: Anthony Parker, G/F (Toronto), Jamario Moon, F (Miami), Shaquille O'Neal, C (trade, Phoenix), Leon Powe, F (Boston)

Subtractions: Tarence Kinsey, G (free agent), Ben Wallace, C (trade, Phoenix), Sasha Pavlovic, G (trade, Phoenix)

[JamStone]

There is a chance that Anthony Parker (if he's not done since I think he is getting up there in age and if he remains healthy) could be the type of teammate LeBron needed even more so than Shaq. Parker has good size and has been an above average defender. The Cavs now don't have to put 6'2" defenders or slower guys like Pavlovic or Szczerbiak on tall, athletic wing players. Parker and Jamario Moon might be the difference this year. Shaq is obviously still a big addition, but I actually like the fact that they added bigger, athletic wing players to complement LeBron. They should be really good this year. Whether that's enough to get them past Boston and Orlando and ultimately the Lakers remains to be seen.

[duncan228]

The Baseline Sees All: Cleveland Cavaliers
SportingNews

Elsewhere in our web of basketball knowledge, you'll find comprehensive team previews by experts intimately acquainted with what makes these NBA teams tick, where they've been, and what might be next for them. So why another set of previews? Because sometimes, it's worth listening to your crazy uncle about that broken leg before you take a second trip to the doctor's office.

I can boil down the Cavs situation to a handful of simple truths. First, LeBron James is near-omnipotent. Remember how, during the Lakers three-peat, it was just assumed that any team with Shaq had a cakewalk to the le? Not to scare anyone, but James is getting close to that, even if he hasn't quite figured out how to coordinate that one-man blitzkreig in such a programmatic fashion.

Ironically, there's the small matter of bringing Shaq himself onto this team. They needed a big man, but no one knows how much Shaq has left in the proverbial tank. I also kind of liked Big Z in that healthily-spaced offense Cleveland ran when all were healthy last season. Oh, and if Delonte West can't play, Mo Williams falls down a notch, and things stagnate. Though maybe I'm underestimating Anthony Parker.

It reads like Christmas past, present and future. Shaq is the past, Delonte the present and Bron's leap into the stratosphere the future.

There's no reason to think that this is anything but a slam dunk for Cleveland—maybe the most impressive feature of this season is how much uncertainty surrounds the league's best teams. But as of now, they're on a one-year plan, and as immediate gratification goes, it's not so bad. Especially not when the franchise is desperate to get Bron his Cleveland les (and vice-versa), which at once raises his investment in the city and makes it okay if he leaves (or so I've been told). Regardless of what happens on the court, though, the melodrama level around this team will be through the roof. Let's just hope O'Neal doesn't get pissy, to boot.

Most Likely Breakout: Anderson Varejao is a legend, Jamario Moon is a very poor man's Shawn Marion with no shot, and Leon Powe is a hard-working athlete who won't be available till the All-Star break. But J.J. Hickson, the second-year PF out of NC State, is the closest thing this team has to an infusion of young talent. Not that they need it, or Hickson's necessarily about to take over the league. But when he gets minutes, Hickson's shown he has the tools to make an impact from that slot, rather than just work hard and play defense. He may be more trouble than this team needs now, since they're pretty much set on making this setup work and winning a le with it. Still, there's a chance that Hickson might get too good to ignore, and that wouldn't be a bad thing.

Most Likely Letdown: Shaq and Bron. It's very simple: Bron's signature move is to barrel into the lane, using all of his speed and strength like a modern day Elgin Baylor. If Shaq's standing there, and is too rickety to get out of the way, suddenly James is partially neutralized by his own team. Kind of like when O'Neal joined the Suns and Nash was suddenly unable to dribble around and under the basket like he had for his entire career up to that point. Beware

Blog superstar: Forget about a blog, Shaq and Bron need a sitcom. It would get better ratings than pretty much anything else on television.

Signature game: I want some definite sense of what Shaq gives them night in, night out. Not just one 20/10 game, but a string of 16/9/3 blocks efforts that show he's part of a team, not simply proving a point.

Why else you should care: Because not following a Shaq/Bron Cavs is like voting in every election but the presidential one.

[TheMACHINE]

Most Likely Letdown: Shaq and Bron. It's very simple: Bron's signature move is to barrel into the lane, using all of his speed and strength like a modern day Elgin Baylor. If Shaq's standing there, and is too rickety to get out of the way, suddenly James is partially neutralized by his own team. Kind of like when O'Neal joined the Suns and Nash was suddenly unable to dribble around and under the basket like he had for his entire career up to that point. Beware

que Spurstrodamus and his "but but Lebron is the best offensive player in the league" bull .

[djohn2oo8]

They're gonna be fun to watch...They'll come out of the East