Time to look at the Central Division of the NBA and see what we can divine for the future prospects of teams and players.

LeBron James

Might as well start with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Shaq is the 4th leading rebounder and 3 leading scorer in the Cavaliers and not playing a heck of a lot of minutes. Of course, Shaq will quietly tell you that he is saving himself for the playoffs. Cleveland does lead the Central Division, but there is not much competition in the Division and you would have to favor Orlando or Boston in the Eastern Conference right now.

Milwaukee lives in second place and the fans are consumed with the legend in the making of Brandon Jennings the smoking hot rookie. The problem with that is that rookies don’t win you titles, unless they go by the name of Magic Johnson.

Get this Milwaukee has lost 8 out of their last 10 games. The Detroit Pistons have lost 7 out of their last 10 games. The Chicago Bulls have lost 8 out of their last 10 games. Not to be out done the Indiana Pacers have lost 9 out of their last 10 games.

You could either say the Bucks are a balanced team or they are so bad that you could not tell me which players are their starting 5 and which players are the backup 5.

The Pistons are depending on a new lineup of youth tied together with oldsters Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins.

Derrick Rose is a bright spot on an otherwise lusterless roster for the Chicago Bulls.

In spite of an unknown superstar called Danny Granger, we don’t even want to discuss the Pacers and their victory total of 6.

Can Shaq be saving himself for the playoffs?

So that leaves us only with the Cavaliers. Can Shaq help LeBron win a NBA title?

If you took one look at O’Neal’s stats without having seen the Cavs play, it would seem like he’s not having a good season. In 14 games — he missed six games with a shoulder strain — O’Neal is averaging a career-low 10.9 points on career-low 52 percent shooting, a career-low 6.6 rebounds in a career-low 23.4 minutes.

Shaquille O’Neal has been limited by injury and the Cavaliers’ depth at the center position. But his performance against Orlando’s Dwight Howard in an early-season victory in Florida indicates that his biggest contributions are likely to come in the postseason.

Several different publications have quoted scouts or executives saying that O’Neal clogs the lane and prevents penetrators like Mo Williams and James from getting to the basket and makes it impossible to space the floor properly. The other criticism is O’Neal is a defensive liability.
All of these statements, frankly, have proven not to be true so far.

O’Neal does help clog the lane, for the opposition. With O’Neal, the Cavs have three different center options with Anderson Varejao and Zydrunas Ilgauskas. This allows for a crisp rotation depending on the opponent and makes sure the Cavs have size in the game at all times.
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Did you see the article on How to Shoot a Free Throw by a couple of engineers that tried to discover which factors would make you a great free throw shooter?

——–Nothing But Net: The Physics of Free-Throw Shooting——–

They kind of picked on Shaq and Ben Wallace, which would be funny if it was not so true. Big men normally have problems shooting a free throw due mostly to their much larger size. They have problems with both the trajectory to the basket and with gripping the ball. If you want to feel like Shaq at the line, then take a child’s rubber basketball and aim at a basket that is about 8 foot off the ground. You will find the trajectory a major issue, but even more troubling is that your hands will grip too much of the ball making it much harder to get proper spin and accuracy.

So what did the engineers say anyway?

First, the engineers say that shooters should launch the shot with about three hertz of back spin. That translates to the ball making three complete backspinning revolutions before reaching the hoop. Back spin deadens the ball when it bounces off the rim or backboard, the engineers assert, giving the ball a better chance of settling through the net.

Where to aim? Tran and Silverberg say you should aim for the back of the rim, leaving close to 5 centimeters – about 2 inches – between the ball and the back of the rim. According to the simulations, aiming for the center of the basket decreases the probabilities of a successful shot by almost 3 percent.

The engineers say that the ball should be launched at 52 degrees to the horizontal. If you don’t have a protractor in your jersey, that means that the shot should, at the highest point in its arc to the basket, be less than 2 inches below the top of the backboard.
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So easier said than done, right? Years ago at Gus Macker 3 on 3 basketball tournaments there was this guy that claimed to be a free throw coach and would stand at the free throw line and bury shot after shot while he gave a talk about correct free throw shooting. It was an amazing site to see. His basic idea was to get your fundamentals down and then practice your brains out. Make sure you make 10 in a row before leaving practice, then maybe the next time bump it up to 15 and so on. He felt if you grooved your form and there were no basic flaws in it, then your free throw shooting would excel!

Somebody tell Shaq.

Years ago there were a couple of unique free throw shooters in Rick Barry (one of the best) and Jamaal Wilkes (an average free throw shooter, but a clutch baseline jump shooter). You have to watch this YouTube. Rick shoots underhanded and was also a great jump shooter. Jamal shoots from behind his head and also shot that way with his normal shot. Check it out.

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The Phoenix Suns came to play this year, led by MVP candidate Steve Nash and coached by Terry Porter.

NBAObsessed has written about Steve and the Suns before.

This one came out yesterday:

Steve Nash and the Red Hot Suns

And this one came out a week ago:

Steve Nash is raising Arizona

Now the Phoenix Suns are leading the Power Rankings from NBA.com edging out the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers. Here is what John Shuman had to say about Phoenix.

Pace: 100.6 (2), Off: 109.1 (5), Def: 103.8 (15)
Most impressive about the Suns’ start is that five of their seven games have been on the road. In handing the Celtics their first loss on Friday, they made Boston look like a bad defensive team. Then the Suns got defensive themselves in Washington.
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Surprising Atlanta is positioned at number 6 by sacrificing defense for offense led by Jamal Crawford the former New York Knick.

Even more surprising is Portland at number 9 using a 3 guard lineup featuring Andre Miller the former 76er.

LeBron is stuck at 11

Woeful, at least woeful for Cleveland, the Cavaliers are placed at number 11. NBAObsessed warned that adding Shaq may plug up the middle and slow down the team. There are no doubts that Shaq can still play high caliber ball for a game or two, but for a season? Remains to be seen. Hopefully Shaq proves NBAObsessed wrong on this one, because how can you not root for the Shaq?

Mike Brown admits that he’s still experimenting with his lineups, looking for the right combinations. The Shaq/Ilgauskas twin-towers frontcourt is even (+0) in 33 minutes of floor time, but Shaq and LeBron are a -11 in 122 minutes together. They need time.

As a side note my Detroit Pistons are lagging back at number 18, three spots up from last week, but have lost Hamilton and Prince to injuries and are depending on an aging Ben Wallace.

Chris Paul and the Hornets are stuck at 25. What has happened to them?

Last and least are the Knicks and Nets. New York is certainly hurting for good basketball right now.

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Hey, how about LeBron James and Braylon Edwards? LeBron claims that Braylon hit a friend of his that weighed about 130 pounds.

Edwards punched entertainment promoter Edward Givens about 2:30 a.m. outside the View Ultralounge & Nightclub on Prospect Avenue, witnesses said.

James learned about the incident at 7 a.m. and later criticized Edwards’ actions. The Cavs superstar called Givens his friend and said it is unfortunate the incident occurred.

“I’ve never crossed paths with Braylon before but it seems like there is a little jealously going on with Braylon and me and my friends,” James said. “I have no idea why. I’ve never said anything to Braylon at all. For him to do that I think is very childish. My friend is 130 pounds. Seriously, it is like hitting one of my kids or something like that. It doesn’t make sense, but the right people will take care of it.”
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LeBron and Shaq

Will they become one of the all time sports duos? Shaq, unfortunately, is getting up in years, so he won’t present the vintage Shaq of the Shaq and Kobe days.

Part of me wants to dismiss the whole Shaq with LeBron leads to a NBA title thing, because Shaq is old or Shaq will plug the middle or Shaq will this or that, but the other part of me has to wonder about how close Shaq has come to winning it all without any players around him at all.

The Celtics have a super team this year and will be hard to get past, unless Kevin Garnett gets hurt again. The Lakers or Spurs will be waiting in the finals and both teams have the size to compete with Shaq, especially and old Shaq.

Check out this video of Shaq and LeBron clowning around.

Have you heard about the corn maze with a LeBron dunking carved out of the field?

The farming powers that be in Milford Center, Ohio, at the LIttle Darby Creek farm in the middle of the state, about 30 minutes from Columbus, have outdone themselves with their depiction of James dunking a basketball. It’s all in the cutting edges of a cornfield on a family’s 125-acre farm.
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Where is my corn maze carving?

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The center position in basketball just ain’t what it used to be. It used to be you started with a center and then you found a point guard to lead the way. You had to have that big guy in the middle or you were toast. That was then and this is now. Now a day, there are some up tempo teams that would rather not play a true center. They would rather have a fast mobile power forward. Phoenix with Amare Stoudemire comes to mind.

Still for your intrepid author it is great to see the big guys play whether it is the Shaq, Ewing, Wilt, Russell, Kareem, or even big bad Dwight Superman Howard. They just bring a different element to the game.

The Ball Don’t Lie has his version of the top 10 centers of the last decade, so let us take a look.

10. Alonzo Mourning – Alonzo once beat my Pistons all by himself. He was just so much bigger and stronger than anyone on the court or in the stands that he could not be stopped and prevented anybody from entering the lane.

9. David Robinson – The Admiral came to Michigan State University when he played for Navy in college. You could see then that he was just too tall and too smooth to be stopped.

8. Yao Ming – the man that reminds us there are tall Chinese people in the world may soon exit from the basketball stage if his ankles and feet don’t hold up. When he is healthy there are few better than him in today’s game.

7. Amare Stoudemire – there is that power forward again. Amare just oozes with talent and you wonder what would happen if he played next to a dominant center.

6. Zydrunas Ilgauskas – Not really an Ilgauskas fan myself, but when he is in the game it is always a tough matchup.

5. Jermaine O’Neal – Another one of those power forward types playing center. My lasting memory of Jermaine is the fact that Rasheed Wallace played with him in Portland before he went to Indiana. Jermaine was just a kid back then. When Indiana played against the Pistons in the playoffs, Rasheed was able to shut Jermaine down game after game. For that matter why isn’t Rasheed Wallace on this list? Geez, “The ball don’t lie” was one of his favorite sayings. You can argue he was a power forward, but he played center after Ben left all the time.

LeBron wonders why Rasheed Wallace is not on the list?

4. Ben Wallace – The other Wallace combined with Rasheed to shut down every player on the planet and get a NBA title for the Pistons. How did Ben do it? He was only 6′ 8″ tall, but when he went up for a board with all those muscles and the wild Fro, it just looked like he was 7 foot tall. Fear the Fro!

3. Dwight Howard – Truly Superman, Dwight Howard just grows better as a player each year. He was scoring in his first two season without really even having any moves!

2. Shaquille O’Neal – Shaq is truly bigger than life whether he is rapping, acting, or playing center. Shazam! Shaq has won titles in L.A. with Kobe and in Miami with Wade. He is often doing more talking than playing, but for years the NBA rules allowed Shaq to use his rather large rear end to back into the paint and jam the ball down. Unstoppable!

1. Tim Duncan – Mr. Fundamental.

Duncan won’t blow you away. Shaq seems scarier, and the “power forward” designation might throw you, but don’t get shook.

Tim guards the low post (guards everything, really), and works from the low post while his “center” teammate (David Robinson, Nazr Mohammad, Fabricio Oberto(notes), Matt Bonner(notes)) works anywhere from the high post (D-Rob, Nazr), the baseline (Fab), or the 3-point line (Red Rocket).

In the meantime, Duncan has destroyed teams defensively, drawn trillions of double teams, scored efficiently and generally acted as what we’d hoped Bill Walton would have turned into.

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That is why San Antonio is in the thick of things every year.

Now here is my question. Where is Kevin Garnett?
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And the winner is…
But first a word from our sponsor…You! Hey, you, click on some of those ads off to the side and keep this blog a rolling. Rolling, Rolling, Rolling.
Now back to Billie Crystal as he announces the best player pickup in the off season…
Drum roll ta ta ta ta tata.
Richard Jefferson by the San Antonio Spurs.
Come on up Richard.

Congratulations and guess why you were number 1?

Jefferson (14 votes)
The first big move of the offseason will prove to be the best move, more than one-quarter of our voters said. RJ is the piece that will get the Spurs back into the West’s elite. Jefferson’s shooting numbers were down last season with the Bucks, but he shot 40 percent from beyond the arc and still knows how to score. Playing in a winning atmosphere certainly will help matters, too.

Most important, perhaps, is that RJ has been healthy for the past two years — something the Spurs’ big three has not been — and he’s still on the right side of 30. If he proves to be the perfect fit, the Spurs could push the Lakers for the Western Conference crown.

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Duncan will have Richard Jefferson to help him to the NBA Title

Squibster take: This one stood out for me, because Richard Jefferson has been a quality player on a couple of confused teams. Now he won’t have to be the team leader. The Spurs have plenty of those guys. He can do what he does best and slash to the basket. Spurs may be once again looking at NBA title contention.

O’Neal to the Cav’s – does Shaq have enough left in the tank?
Artest to the Lakers – can Phil Jackson handle this guy? If he does then Phil goes to the Hall of Fame without retiring.
Carter to Orlando – Plenty of O, but will he deliver the D?
Marion, Miller, Turkoglu, and Wallace round out the field with Rasheed to the Celtics maybe paying the biggest dividends.

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If you have seen the movie Ice Age and the sequels Ice Age II and III, then you know there is a squirrel in the movie that really has nothing to do with the movie, but is obsessed with a giant acorn. Each movie shows clip after clip of the squirrel named Scrat chasing after this giant acorn.

Dwight Howard feels he is Scrat and the NBA Title is his giant acorn and he is obsessed with getting the acorn.

Another not so gentle giant named Shrek or would that be Shaq, has recently moved to Cleveland in search of another NBA Title for himself and a good friend named LeBron.

Will Shaq slow down Dwight Howard?

Now all the talk is on what will happen when the two giants face off against each other. Shaq has prepped the way with some not so kind words degrading Dwight Howard and his offensive moves.

“I haven’t spoken with him,” Howard said. “I’ve seen a lot of the comments that he has said on TV and read a lot of the comments that he’s made. I would say it hurt my feelings, a little bit, just to hear him say some of the things he said.”

Looking back on last season’s Eastern Conference finals, it’s easy to understand why Cleveland wanted O’Neal so badly to counter Howard. The Cavs had no defensive answer for the Magic’s All-Star center, so they took a gamble that O’Neal is still enough of a force at age 37 to stand up to him.

“Everybody has said, ‘Cleveland got Shaq for you. Cleveland got Shaq to win a championship,’ ” Howard said.

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Everyone seems to think it is a foregone conclusion that Shaq can handle Dwight Howard enough for LeBron James to deliver Cleveland to the finals, but your intrepid author has watched age sneak up on Shaq and he may find the fast improving Superman is a lot more than he bargained for.

The bigger worry might be how the Magic maintain their team chemistry without Hedo Turkoglu and with the addition of Vince Carter. Those team changes will more likely determine the fate of the Magic.

And if the Magic don’t make it, you can always go watch Ice Age III. It was a great movie!

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There was a lot of player movement in the off season with Jefferson to the Spurs, Artest to the Lakers, ‘Sheed to the Celtics, Miller leaving the 76ers, Gordon to the Pistons, Thomas to the Mavs, Okafor to the Hornets, and Turkoglu to the Raptors, but maybe the most intriguing move was Shaq to the LeBrons…er..Cavaliers.

Cleveland needs to keep LeBron in Cleveland and that could change next year, but so far they have done little to prove to LeBron that there will be any players of consequence helping him to fight for a NBA title.

Now some would argue that getting Shaq changes all that. Steve Nash makes such an argument.

Nash’s Phoenix Suns traded O’Neal to the Cleveland Cavaliers last month, where the 37-year-old center will try to bring James his first championship.

O’Neal is “still a great player, but LeBron is going to be the focal point,” Nash said. “I think he’s happy with that. At the same time, he’ll get a lot of opportunities to be in the spotlight, and he’s great at it.”

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Will Shaq help or slow down Cleveland?

Cleveland still seems likely to lose LeBron after only finding Mo Williams and Shaq to add to the team after 6 years. Mo did not show up in the playoffs and Shaq is 37 years old.

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Cleveland knows the clock is ticking and they want to do something about it. The clock is the time it takes to get to next year when LeBron James becomes a free agent and the whole state of Ohio holds its breath while suitors come out of the woodwork with all kinds of enticing deals for LeBron.

Think about it. Why did Cleveland easily go after Shaq? There is some question as to whether he is a good fit, because the guy guarding Shaq never has to go more than 5 feet away from the basket, thus cutting off the LeBron drives to the hoops. Shaq is also late in his career and will have a hard time averaging over 25 minutes or 45 games.

Shaq will be key to LeBron's future in Cleveland

But Cleveland had to do it. They had to show LeBron they were trying and if it works, then LeBron would go to the finals and probably stay in Cleveland.

The Cavaliers also have some free agent money and although not a lot, it may be crucial to land a shooter or defender. Here are some possible inexpensive free agent options for Cleveland.

Matt Barnes, Suns — Another lanky wing who is a solid shooter and has the size the Cavs want. His defense is a question, but he has the tools. Excellent spot-up shooter and good in transition going to the rim.

Anthony Parker, Raptors — The Raptors love him and may not let him walk, but they have cap space and other needs. It is well known the Cavs attempted to sign him when he came over from the Euroleague three years ago, and the tall, smooth shooter is very much still on their radar.

Dahntay Jones, Nuggets — Unheralded player with stats that won’t impress many, but has worked to establish himself as a strong outside defender with good size. Was an overlooked key in the Nuggets’ success last season.

Desmond Mason, Thunder — Limited offensively and coming off an injury but also one of the better wing defenders in the league and fits the Cavs’ character requirements. Won’t be the Cavs’ first choice, but they certainly will have him on their list.
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What is up with Shaq and all the Dwight Howard bashing. It just never seems to stop with this guy.

First let us lay the ground work. You will find me to be a big Shaq fan, even watching Kaazam and trying to enjoy it, even putting up with all the anti-Kobe stuff. So why does Shaq have to go after Dwight Howard?

In the past year alone, Shaq called Howard an “impostor” and insisted that, “Everything he’s done, I’ve invented,” and on and on. On opening night of the NBA Finals, Shaq posted a goofy photo on Twitter of what a Dwight Howard and Stan Van Gundy child would look like. After five years of this, Howard still doesn’t get the reason that Shaq revels in ripping him.

“I can’t tell you why he’s said a lot of discouraging things,” Howard said Friday at the Staples Center. “I wish he wouldn’t say it because he’s one of the few guys that we all look up to.”

For most, O’Neal’s motives are transparent. Somehow, Shaq thinks it diminishes his own legacy if Howard achieves something significant sooner than he did.

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Shaq smiles, but then opens his mouth

Shaq even worries about Jabbar and rips on him as well. Now wouldn’t it be funny if Shaq goes to a team in the East and has to play against Dwight Howard to get to the NBA Finals. Now then, justice could be served.

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