It's done. Shaquille O'Neal is headed to Phoenix.
The disgruntled and oft-injured 14-time all-star managed to beg his way out of Miami just two seasons after Dwayne Wade helped him win his fourth NBA title and, more importantly, his first without embittered battery mate Kobe Bryant.
In exchange for O'Neal, the Heat get a versatile backcourt player in Marcus Banks and fantasy hoops darling Shawn Marion, whose real-life game isn't too bad, either.
To the casual NBA fan, the move looks like a no-brainer. Even some of the league's more experienced pundits have openly said that such a transaction vaults Phoenix toward, if not to the top of the Western Conference.
After all, it gives Phoenix something this generation's Suns have never had. It gives Phoenix the one thing that many believe has held them back from reaching the NBA finals. It gives them something that all of the other Western Conference team who have bested them have had - a bruising presence in the paint.
Or does it?
Let's not kid ourselves. Shaq isn't the type of dominant center he used to be. To say that old age has not been kind to him would be an understatement.
Every Superman has his Kryptonite. In Shaq's case that amber-colored rock is better visualized through x-rays and MRIs that have revealed the toll his 350-pound frame has taken on his knees, ankles and feet. As a result, he's played in only 72 of 129 games since he last hoisted the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
Even when he is healthy enough to suit up, his contributions have been marginal at best. He's rebounding at a 7.8 per-game average and his 14.2 points per contest have made Diesel look more like a Hundai running on Arco unleaded.
Suns' GM Steve Kerr has said that the aquisition of O'Neal would allow Amare Stoudemire to play at his more natural position, power forward. Kerr also said that even when Shaq is not healthy enough to play, Boris Diaw will be more than a servieable substitute.
As for Banks, he was wasting away at the back end of an already deep Phoenix rotation, making him extremely expendable.
Those are the things the Phoenix front office will point to in order to make the deal seem like a steal.
But it wasn't. Those truths don't outweigh the most glaring on of all - that the Suns are less suited for a run at the title now than they were before.
Marion was Phoenix's best rebounder while also being one of the one of the league's most versatile and effective defenders. And above all else, Marion was a perfect fit for coach Mike D'Antoni's up-tempo offense.
Shaq, needless to say, is not. He's a plodder, an over-bearing one, but a plodder nonetheless. Even in his most energetic and limber years, he was still more of a lumbering bull than an agile gazelle.
Marion was the gazelle. He was Amare Stoudemire with a jumpshot. He was Steve Nash's go-to guy on the break. He fit in with the herd.
Shaq doesn't. He is the bull in Phoenix's fine china shop. He is an oversized, ill-fitting, warn-down cog clogging up the middle of an otherwise well-oiled machine.
His presence in the Phoenix frontcourt is not a step closer to a Western Conference crown. It is an testament to the short-term success, but long-term failure of the Suns' offensive system. Nothing more.
Suns set? Not really.
And All That Could Have Been
The New England Patriots were supposed to finish the season as the undefeated, 19-0 Superbowl Champions. They were supposed to roll into Superbowl XLII and demolish an over-matched and under-experienced New York Giants football team. They were supposed to claim the throne as the "Greatest Team Ever".
Wait a minute, wasn't someone supposed to tell the Giants?
Because apparently, they didn't get the memo that they were supposed to just roll over and die. The Giants once again rallied together against a team that, on paper at least, they had no business beating, to pull off one of the most shocking upsets in sports history, defeating the Patriots, 17-14.
It was the crowning achievement for a Giants team that has overcome so much adversity from members of the media and even former teammates questioning whether coach Tom Coughlin or quarterback Eli Manning had what it took to take the team to the next level.
Coughlin proved that he was not the same hard-nosed, drill seargant that nearly got ran out of town by his own players two years ago, and Eli proved that his mistake filled past may finally be behind him.
Neither have any intention of going anywhere, and with the young nucleus the team has, it's a safe bet that this team will be contenders for quite sometime. It's too early to, as Dennis Green would say, "crown" Eli Manning.
One play from that final drive that will likely go overlooked is an overthrown ball intended for Amani Toomer that fell in and out of the hands of Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel. So, you can't say he's completely out of the woods yet, but the Eli Manning we saw in the postseason is drastically different from the Eli Manning we've seen since he came into the NFL.
While it's clear that the Giants have a bright future, what is a little less clear is what is going to become of this Patriots team.
This team had everything. The mastermind head coach, the record-breaking quarterback, the record-breaking wide receiver and a veteran-laden defense with plenty of Superbowl and playoff experience. They were labeled the "best team ever" halfway through the regular season and it was certainly hard to argue against that given the accolades they were gobbling up.
Getting so far and falling short has to be a bitter pill to swallow. The Miami Dolphins were the laughing stock of the NFL this season after finishing 1-15. All things considered though, the sorrow, regret and "what if's?" that ran through the mind of the players of that 1-15 team were probably nothing compared to the same questions and emotions that ran through the heads of the 18-1 Patriots as their 2008 season came to an end.
The Patriots had a chance to stake their claim as the greatest team, dynasty, coach, quarterback, receiver, waterboy, trainer, etc. of all-time and with the loss, are now at risk of being just a footnote in history.
It's tough to get back to the Superbowl and it's even tougher to get back after losing in the big game the year before. Making things tougher is the fact that the Patriots will be faced with a number of key personnel questions in the off-season. Linebackers Tedy Bruschi and Junior Seau are both free agents and even if the money is there to sign them, the true question will be do they have enough left in the tank that it would be worth re-upping their contracts, or is it time to cut bait and bring in younger players?
Randy Moss is also a free agent and while I'm sure he'd love to return to New England, he's not going to come at the bargain basement price he did this season. Early reports say he's looking for at least $9 million a year to re-sign with the Patriots.
Cornerback Asante Samuel is a free agent after being given the team's franchise tag this season. The Patriots likely will have to make a choice between keeping Samuel and Moss.
Then again, if the team can somehow finagle a way under the salary cap to re-sign all these players, will it even matter? Bringing all of them back would leave no money to make other acquisitions to the team. It would, however, give the Patriots a chance to make one more run with the same squad that flirted with perfection, but if they couldn't close the deal this year with literally everything in their favor, why would they be able to in 2009?
You can never count out a team with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, but it's hard to figure out how a team, even with the mental makeup the Patriots have, can rebound and put such a disappointing season behind them and move ahead without thinking about how close they were to perfection and what could have been.
Kupchak Comes Through In The Clutch
After the heart-breaking last minute loss to the Detroit Pistons Thursday night, Los Angeles Laker fans were sitting on pins and needles, wondering if the team was on the verge of another mid-season collaspe like the one that sent them into a tailspin a year ago.
Injuries had decimated a strong contender for the Western Conference championship that had gone 2-5 since Andrew Bynum went down.
Kwame Brown had shown no signs of stepping up in the absence of the young phenom, Lamar Odom continued to prove that he lacks the intelligence and skills that will transform him into an All-Star player, and even though he didn't want to admit it, Kobe Bryant was once again growing increasingly frustrated with the underachieving performance of his team.
It seems that just a few weeks ago, the talk of the NBA was about the Lakers and how they looked to be serious threats to dethrone the San Antonio Spurs as league champions, but that talk seemed to fade when Bynum dislocated his knee against the Memphis Grizzlies.
My, my, how funny it is that the Lakers' championship hopes seems to rest on a Grizzlies' team that has been a perennial lottery team, except for a few playoff seasons.
Now, with the addition of Pau Gasol via a trade for Kwame Brown and Javaris Crittenton, the Lakers' season is saved from the impending doom in which it was headed.
In his biggest play of his life, Mitch Kupchak his come through in the clutch in a major way, and despite the moniker that he was given after trading players such as Shaq and Caron Butler away for what seemed to be peanuts, Kupchak is no longer considered to be a "Kupcake."
Getting an All-Star player in Gasol for basically nothing makes Kupchak look like Jerry West, the man known as "Mr. Clutch."
Laker fans could now look forward to their team playing well into May for years to come.
Not only have the Lakers gotten a solid big man who can score and rebound on a consistent basis, they have gotten themselves a virtually unstoppable two-headed monster in the front court when Bynum gets healthy.
Most teams are fortunate to have one good center on the roster, but the Lakers now have two potential All-Star big men playing on the same team.
Although Boston may have the best record in the NBA, the Lakers have served notice to the rest of the league that they are going to be a major force to reckon with late in the season.
Checkmate
There were two sides to Bobby Fischer and it shouldn't come as a surprise that nobody is really quite sure which side to focus on after the chess legend died in Iceland on Thursday.
On one side, you have the child prodigy who took the chess world by storm. He began winning championships at the age of 13 and to this day is the only American to ever win the World Chess Championship. He made chess more than just a game a bunch of old people sat around and played.
On the other side, there was the mysterious, reclusive man who disappeared from the game and the public eye at the height of his success and became an angry, hate-filled person as the years progressed.
As a chess player, it can't be stated enough what he meant to the game. He was arguably the best ever. He was the one who my friend's father, who taught us how to play chess as kids, always told us stories about.
Fischer's crowning moment was winning the World Chess Championship from russian player Boris Spassky in Iceland in 1972.
Those of us under the age of 40 will probably never understand quite what this victory meant to the American people at the time. Maybe your parents or grandparents can tell you. It was at the height of the Cold War and you had Fischer becoming the first American World Champion, defeating a russian to win the championship that had been dominated by the Soviet Union for almost its entire existence.
And of course, that is where everything fell apart. His eccentric behavior began to take over his life in 1975 when he was scheduled to defend his championship against Anatoly Karpov. Fischer made a list of 64 demands in terms of tournament conditions that had to be met for him to play the game. When they were not met, he opted to forfeit the title to Karpov.
From there, Fischer went into hiding, not making so much as one public appearance until he reemerged in 1992 to play a re-match with Spassky in Yugoslavia, which was illegal due to a United Nations Embargo that put sanctions on sporting events.
He won the match and then went back into hiding. He was on the run from authorities as he began on a downward spiral that never seemed to end. Born of Jewish descent, he began going on radio shows, bashing all Jews and calling for the slaughtering of the entire race, claiming that he was not in fact Jewish.
Worse yet, still bitter about not being allowed back into America after his 1992 match, he went on a radio station in Europe after the attacks of September 11 and applauded the terrorists, calling for the destruction of the United States.
It's hard to believe a man who had at one point meant so much to America, had been reduced to a self-hating supporter of terrorism.
And as such, it's not hard to believe that the same man died alone in the country of Iceland to very little sympathy or fanfare.
Losing Isiah Would Get Knicks On Winning Track Again
Not since September 2001 has the city of New York seen as much confusion as it has seen since the NBA season tipped off back in October, and Osama Bin Laden has nothing to do with it.
People can point their fingers at Isiah Thomas for the debacle of a storied New York Knick franchise that was once a perennial playoff team.
In recent years, the pride of New York basketball has became the embarrassment of the NBA, compiling a 42-74 record during the two seasons that Thomas has been the coach.
Although Thomas has, at best, had a mediocre coaching career (173-189) with Indiana and New York in five seasons, most of his damage has been done off the court as a general manager.
Just last summer, Madison Square Garden was ordered to pay Anuche Browne Sanders $11.6 million in a sexual harassment lawsuit in which Thomas allegedly called Sanders a "bitch," and forced her to kiss him.
Of course, Thomas didn't have to pay.
It seems that for most of his career in the NBA, Thomas has been a bully in getting his way, and no one seemed to question his judgment.
When he forced Larry Brown, one of the premier coaches in NBA history, to leave the Knicks so he could coach, no one with a reasonable mind in the Knicks' ownership had foresight enough to intervene.
When Thomas thought it would be genius to play two shoot-first-pass-later point guards (Steve Francis and Stephon Marbury) at the same time, no one tugged his coattails to let him know that it would not work.
When Thomas drafted a third point guard, the undersized but passionate Nate Robinson from Washington, and traded for underachieving players in Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry, no one, except the fans in New York, saw the freight train engineered by Thomas collide into the Garden, leaving a pile of crap on the hardwood floor for Knick owner James Dolan to clean up.
Apparently, Dolan is in no rush to save his crumbling franchise from the man who used it and abused it, and turned it into a wasteland of greed, selfishness, hopelessness and unhappiness.
If Dolan is banking on Isiah Thomas to lead the Knicks to a championship, then he needs to file for bankruptcy now because Thomas is only good for destroying teams.
Ask Indiana and Toronto.
Oh, I also forgot to mention that he single-handly brought down the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) league because of his mismanagement, which should have been a clear indication for Dolan not to hire Thomas in the first place.
Bottom line: Thomas is incapable of turning a team into a championship team because he is, and always will be a loser.
