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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'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."