Shaq puts his muscle behind Cavaliers win

This is the Shaquille O'Neal that coach Mike Brown and the Cavaliers were hoping they would get. This Shaq, all 325 pounds of him, proved an indomitable force inside; this Shaq scored points; this Shaq guarded the paint like a Secret Service agent. He made a dynamic complement for LeBron James.

Now, perhaps I overvalued this one performance. Sure, Shaq finished with a double-double (14 points, 11 rebounds), but he did so against the Trailblazers, a team with a few fine pieces like Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge but with no one capable of pushing Shaq around inside.

"Anytime we can attack the rim, anytime that we get 'The Big Fella' playing with the will and the force that he played with, we can score a lot of points in the paint," said Brown, who bordered on giddy about a 104-99 win his Cavs came away with Friday night. "It showed in this game."

Brown got all he could ask of "The Big Fella" in a game the Cavaliers needed. They had limped back to The Q with two losses from a short road trip, and in those games, Shaq didn't dominate as Brown had hoped.

Shaq was all but invisible Wednesday night against the Rockets, a smallish, quick team that gave the Cavs fits inside. The loss to the Rockets is behind the Cavs. He doesn't have to figure out how the Cavs can better matchup against a team like Houston.

For the Rockets aren't a concern of Brown's now, not that he was happy they had beaten his team. But they aren't in the Eastern Conference, and the only way his Cavaliers will meet Houston is in the NBA Finals in June. That should give Brown ample time to devise a strategy that might be more effective.

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Rembrandt? No, LeBron just being LeBron

His was an unremarkable performance for three quarters. For nothing LeBron James had done last night during those 31 minutes he spent on the floor against the Utah Jazz looked like much.

The Cavs, though, didn't need remarkable from LeBron -- not at that point.

But without Shaquille O'Neal (he was sidelined with a bad shoulder, or so the Cavs told the media), all eyes inside The Q focused on King James, because three quarters don't decide a basketball game. And to think the Jazz, a team crippled with injuries, wouldn't make a late run would be to confuse the Jazz with the Knicks and not understand its brilliant mastermind, Jerry Sloan.

Few teams in the NBA are as well coached as Sloan's Jazz. Even without Kyle Korver, Ronnie Price and Deron Williams, perhaps the best point guard in the universe, the Jazz remained a team the Cavs would have to reckon with. The reckoning began with 1:56 left on Carlos Boozer's two free throws.

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Cavs look like a team that's 'clicking'

The Cavaliers return Saturday night to The Q. They're returning to town to face the Utah Jazz with a cockiness and the tough guy's swagger that seemed to be missing in the first five or six games of their season.

Winning has a way of putting the strut back into pro athlete's step, and to perform in victory the way the LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal, Mo Williams and the rest of their gang have done lately is reason enough to predict their early-season troubles were behind them.

In a display that looked like midseason form, they showed offensive versatility during their two-game road trip.

Coach Mike Brown figured out how to use Shaq, and Brown's decision to start J.J. Hickson over Anderson Varejao was coaching brilliance. It was risky business to bring Varejao off the bench as a sixth man, but Hickson's athleticism complemented Shaq's powerful inside game better than Varejao's does.

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Revenge for Cavs? Nah, just a good win

To think about revenge in November makes as much sense as checking your Christmas list in early May. For anybody whose name is on the list will have plenty of days left to show Santa if he's been naughty or nice.

So LeBron James and the Cavaliers could dismiss the talk of revenge, giving it not a minute's thought last night in Orlando. Payback -- or revenge -- needed to wait until the games meant something more than a first-weeks-of-the-season win did. To exact revenge, the Cavaliers must beat the Magic in May or June, not in November.

At this point, they were more than willing to settle for this 102-93 win -- a win in Orlando, too.

In that win, the Cavs showed what they weren't able to show when Orlando eliminated them in the Eastern Conference Finals last season. They proved they could handle Magic star Dwight Howard in the paint.

And that's one thing the Cavs have to do: now and in their future. They went into the off-season with that as their goal, because LeBron could never hope to bring a championship to Cleveland if he and his teammates couldn't figure out a way to match up better against Howard.

At its essence, basketball between elite teams is a game of match-ups, and the addition of Shaquille O'Neal has given the Cavaliers an effective counterpunch to Howard, although no one knew with certainty beforehand how Shaq's presence might work against the Magic.

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Shaq's play brings smile to Coach Brown

Coach Mike Brown didn’t want to show too much emotion on the bench. Coaches in the NBA know not to do that when their teams are running roughshod over an opponent. No, they must sit there and bask in the moment. They can’t be sure how long moments like these will last.

With the Cavaliers, Brown is expecting to see plenty more moments like this one, a 102-90 win Tuesday night over the Wizards. His Cavs played the way Brown had been wanting them to play this season: They hustled on defense; they moved the ball crisply on offense; and they got Shaquille O’Neal involved in all of it.

Brown’s smile afterward? Ear to ear.

“It’s great,” he said. “It’s like Christmas.”

Don’t go unwrapping those presents just yet, coach. Christmas won’t come for your Cavaliers until June -- if they can last that long. For if they make it deep into June, they’ll be in the NBA Finals, which is the reason they brought Shaquille O'Neal to Cleveland in the first place.

But bringing a talent like Shaq to Cleveland and using him aren’t the same thing. Brown had to figure out a way to get the most out of Shaq. No youngster at 37, he couldn’t be expected to put in the minutes he did a decade ago, and people have questioned aloud whether could run the floor and occupy two defenders inside.

No need to raise those questions anew, because if the victory over the Wizards, a team with postseason aspirations that are legit, attested to anything, it was this: Shaq O’Neal has plenty of skills left in his aging body.

For long stretches against the Wizards, Shaq looked as if he had drank from the fountain of youth. He pushed center Brendan Haywood around like stick figure, muscling inside the lane for high-percentage shots.

“I gotta lot ’em know I’m still here and am a force to be reckoned with,” he said as he sat in front of his locker stall.

They know, Shaq; they know. They can’t but know after seeing you score 21 points and play 28 1/2 minutes. The eight rebounds showed plenty as well, because they were statistics that complemented the inside play of LeBron James and Anderson Varejao.

Bigger than all of this was the fact, finally, Shaq fit in.

“Probably my first game where I was very, very aggressive,” he said. “The other games I was trying to fit, and I hadn’t been really taking a lot of shots; I was just trying to make sure everybody else gets involved.

“I think the guys know whenever they need a basket, they can throw it down there.”

“Down there” is in the paint -- Shaq’s domain. The weak need not venture there, and even the strong might be wise to avoid it. When Shaq can play like he did Tuesday, he can do marvelous things for a team who needs him to.

Brown would love to see Shaq play like this every night. So would LeBron and the Cavs fans who pack The Q. That might be more than Shaq can give them. Then again, who knows for certain what Shaq has left in his fuel tank. He surely ain’t running on empty, which is the reason Brown could smile.

"That was fun to watch," he said.

Cavs coach welcomes all-purpose West back

Coach Mike Brown still had to wonder how his Cavs might look when all the pieces were in place. Brown, as with almost everybody else, knew he had been blessed with a good collection of splendid talent, but how to blend that talent had been his struggle.

It didn't help Brown, a defense-minded coach, that he was forced to play without Delonte West, his hustling, all-purpose guard who had to sit out the first three games of the season with psychological problems.

His mind right now, West returned to a standing ovation Saturday night, no small matter to Brown. He was as pleased to have West in the lineup as the fans were, because West can open Brown's offense in ways not possible without him.

No other Cavaliers player, including LeBron James, is as versatile as West.

"Delonte can play," Brown said. "He really affects the game in a lot of different ways. He's a guy who can score but also run the team and distribute the ball at the right time."

Doubt his words if you'd like. Surely, Brown wouldn't be the first coach to inflate the contribution of a player. In this case, he was speaking the unvarnished truth.

The evidence was in West's performance, and in the comparison to how the Cavs played in their first three games as opposed how they played in their last game, West proved the difference in this 90-79 dismantling of the Bobcats. He played a bigger part in the win than any of the 20-562 fans in The Q could have expected.

"It wasn't a surprise," LeBron said.

West scored 13 points and handed out a couple of assists, statistical totals that didn't match the nightly outputs of Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade or Brandon Roy. Brown doesn't need those kinds of statistics from West, not when he can count on LeBron for them.

What Brown does need from West is what he got: a productive performance from the floor, strong defense and selfless play. His first game back wasn't markedly different from games he had in the past. If West had any first-game-back rust, he didn't show it. He looked good.

So did the Cavaliers.

"Missing piece," Mo Williams said of West. "It felt good to have the whole team back."

Williams called West's performance "terrific," perhaps an overstatement. Such hyperbole isn't uncommon when one teammate talks about another teammate. In this case, Williams meant it, because West's return gave him someone to share the point guard's.

Brown counted on that, too. He was, however, more circumspect in his analysis of West's return. He didn't necessarily expect West to be in midseason form. What player is four games into the season?

The fact that West is back will allow Brown to reconfigure his substitution patterns and build an offense and a defense that are cohesive. Compared to the first two games of the season, he did a better job of rotating players in and out in the victory Friday night in Minneapolis, and his rotation had few exposed seams against the Bobcats, no NBA powerhouse.

West was the glue that Brown's Cavs had been missing. With him back, they should get better and better the more they work together.

"I think we're taking steps in the right direction," Brown said. "We still have a long way to go. I think guys understand that, and in time, we will be a very good basketball team. We're pretty good right now, but we have the chance to be great."

(Photo of Cavs coach MIke Brown from NBA.com)

'Shaq era' opens with a disappointment

Shaquille O'Neal had waited since June for this day, a moment in this man's storied NBA career where he could begin helping LeBron James and his hometown fulfill a dream. For their dream is also Shaq's dream; he wants what they have long wanted: a championship.

No team wins an NBA championship in late October, not even if it does have Shaq and LeBron in its lineup. To dream overly much about one now might prove a distraction with a full season and a long, arduous postseason left to play.

But after seeing Shaq, LeBron and the Cavs play Tuesday night, people will need to mute their talk of an NBA championship. They ought not discuss the topic just yet, because not much the Cavs did against the Boston Celtics, another team with title aspirations, suggested such talk was anything but wishful thinking.

For in this 95-89 loss at home, the Cavs looked like an NBA team struggling to find its rhythm, although their struggles surprised nobody.

As LeBron would put it: "It's a real transition period for ourselves."

Before the game, he had mentioned the team needed time to meld into a cohesive unit. He proved prophetic. Unlike the Celtics, the Cavs had added too many pieces in the offseason, and those pieces need to figure out where they fit.

The most important of those pieces was the 7-foot-1, 345-pound Shaq. He had a fast start, helping the Cavs build a 19-5 lead early. Big leads can evaporate quickly in the NBA, and this lead did. As it disappeared, so too did Shaq. He looked as out of place on The Q's hardwood floor as CC Sabathia there in spikes.

The temptation in Cleveland is to look for deeper reasons. People might moan about the Sports Illustrated curse, a bit of sports foolishness that says putting a star athlete on the cover (LeBron and Shaq were on its NBA preview edition) dooms him to a disastrous season.

What will doom the Cavs won't be a fictional curse from the Land of Oz — SI curse or not. It will be their inability to mesh LeBron with Shaq, Anthony Parker and all the other new pieces, plus trying to find meaningful roles for Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Daniel Gibson.

Incorporating Shaq into the mix, however, is crucial to whatever awaits the Cavs as the 2009-10 season unfolds, coach Mike Brown said.

"He's gonna help us a lot," Brown said. "At the beginning, he was going good, and we were going good. It's going to be a feel by me as to how many minutes we are going to play him."

Brown has plenty of time to sort all of this out.

"It's one game," he said.

LeBron and Shaq agreed.

Neither expected the Cavs to go 82-0, even if Shaq were closer to 25 than to 40. Yeah, they would have preferred to treat the 20,562 fans inside The Q to a performance that was befitting a team with title aspirations, but ...

So they travel to Toronto for a game Wednesday night, and LeBron, Shaq, Brown and the rest of the Cavaliers will put this first game of the season behind them. They have things to work on — from defense to how best to involve Shaq.

"You can't win a championship in the first game," O'Neal said. "We would have liked to start off 1-0, but there are plenty of games left. We'll be fine."

Lights, NBA eyes on Shaq's debut with Cavs

The Shaquille O’Neal era debuts tonight at The Q, but nobody, even Shaq, can be sure what it portends for the Cavaliers.

After a trade with the Suns, he arrived here in early summer with a big smile and big promises. Shaq said he was willing to play the enforcer’s role – to be the man whose task it was to ensure nobody messed with LeBron James.

Shaq would be LeBron's sidekick.

The Cavs had tried to find complements the past couple of seasons. They brought in Donyell Marshall and Larry Hughes a few years ago, and Lorenzen Wright came here last year.

All are gone now.

They brought in Mo Williams and Delonte West last season. They remain, serving as an able supporting cast for the player that David Stern dared to suggest might be a better talent than Michael Jordan.

Stern’s high praise seems premature, if not downright blasphemous. For Jordan won more than a handful of championship rings. LeBron, well ... he has none.

But that has less to do with LeBron and more to do with his waiting for the Cavs to find him a dependable Scottie Pippen. They are counting on Shaq to play that part, too – to be Reggie Wayne to LeBron’s Peyton Manning.

Is that asking too much of Shaq?

Without a doubt, he will be an upgrade over the plodding Zdrunas Ilgauskas in the middle, which is faint praise. For Ilgauskas might have a hard time beating Bill Russell up the floor, and Russell’s 75.

Shaq’s no young man either, though he’s a lot younger than Russell. Age isn’t but a number, Satchel Paige used to say. It’s what you can do, no matter what the number next to your age reads.

That’s the question about Shaq: What can he still do?

He has a lot of miles on his tires, and a man of his age doesn’t have the wheels to run the court like a gazelle. Up-tempo basketball is what LeBron favors, and he might not have the patience to wait for Shaq to settle into the paint.

Running the floor isn't one of Shaq’s strengths these days. What is his strength is his ability to dominate inside, giving LeBron someone who can occupy Magic star Dwight Howard and push around Celtics centers Kendrick Perkins, “Big Baby” Davis and Rasheed Wallace.

That’ll be the difference in these Cavaliers. They should be a stronger team on defense, a point of emphasis with Cavs coach Mike Brown. Yet as much as he preaches tough defense, Brown knows the Cavs have to score, and scoring is what LeBron does best.

He’s an unstoppable force inside and out, but he’s no one-man team. No player ever has been in the NBA, including Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Magic Johnson or Larry Bird.

Shaq was once as close to that one-man team as anybody who ever played the game. Those days are in his past. He’s still good; he’s not great anymore.

In LeBron’s mind, greatness would be nice, if it were possible. It’s not, so the Cavaliers and LeBron will have to settle for good – or at least better than Ilgauskas -- if they hope to win anNBA championship.