Shaq to Miami?

Caroncollector

Heat should join Shaq sweepstakes






Shaquille O'Neal is a big baby, a diva in size 21EEE sneakers.

He couldn't make a free throw if his next meal depended on it.

He is coming off a career-worst season scoring average.

He is high-maintenance and high-mileage, likely past his prime.

He would cost a fortune, and detonate your roster to get.

Conclusion: Go get him, Miami.

Explore the possibility seriously, at least. Be creative. Risk a lot. Be willing to scrap the blueprint, because Shaq is the blueprint. You start anew with him as your literal and figurative center -- the sun from which the Heat emanates -- and you are a more feared team overnight, a contender.

Two dominant stars combined with a handful of solid parts are enough to make an NBA team a force, such as what Houston hopes it has done by adding Tracy McGrady to Yao Ming. Imagine Miami starting over with Shaq and Dwyane Wade and building out from that nucleus? The imagination needn't work too hard.

O'Neal -- even at 32, even with the goofy, mercurial rep -- remains perhaps the biggest force in the game, arguably the greatest center ever, an all-NBA first-teamer six times, including the past five years.

His 7-1, 320-pound frame would especially cut an awesome path through the center-shy Eastern Conference, where everybody's hunt for ''bigs'' (including Miami's) seems accentuated, more desperate.

WORTH THE SHUFFLE

Don't get me wrong. You don't break up the Heat's promising young core except under extraordinary circumstances, but Shaq is one. Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett might be the only other players who, if available, you would do just about anything short of kidnapping to acquire.

In this case, as most know, Shaq is sick of the Los Angeles melodrama and tired of fighting fellow diva Kobe Bryant for the team tiara and has demanded a trade. He even put his Beverly Hills mansion on the market for a cool $7.5 million. (The shack can be yours for roughly $35,000 a month. The Shaq costs somewhat more.)

The fact O'Neal might opt out of his contract after this coming season gives him leverage here. The Lakers, hell-bent to keep the free agent Bryant, seem inclined to get something for Shaq now rather than have him pout in L.A. another year, then get nothing when he leaves.

Miami wasn't even in the gallery, let alone the picture, until Mr. O'Neal deigned recently to include the Heat among teams he would play for, along with Dallas, Sacramento, Orlando and New Orleans.

Maybe Shaq pictures South Beach as an ideal setting for the filming of the sequel to Kazaam, in which he played a rapping genie and yet was grievously overlooked by Oscar. Or maybe he has seen Wade's game. Or heard the early buzz on top pick Dorell Wright. Or maybe he's just adding teams willy nilly to grow the market.

We can't know O'Neal's real interest, or Miami's, at this point. Heat general manager Randy Pfund can't say much because Shaq is under contract. But I found it notable that Pfund's only comment this week wasn't to flatly deny interest, but rather to note any such mega-deal would be ``very complicated.''

WADE SHOULD STAY

Shaq will earn around $28 million next season. To make a deal work under the NBA's Byzantine salary cap and also offer enough to perhaps entice L.A., Miami would have to at least offer Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and either Eddie Jones or Brian Grant.

Wade should be the only untouchable.

Miami might not have enough to give, but why not at least try to pull the biggest trigger out there? Why not try to be a contender right now rather than tinker and craft and hope you might be in three years? The modern NBA is too volatile to count on that.

Miami, even with last season's promising finish, isn't close enough to championship contention to erase the gap with its $5.1 million and $1.6 million cap exceptions in free agency. You don't get difference-makers (such as center Erick Dampier) with that. You get Vlade Divac.

Toronto overpaying almost $5 million a season Wednesday to sign Miami sparkplug Rafer Alston, who wasn't going to start here, shows you how little you get for that kind of dough.

What you can get for that are solid parts to augment your Shaq/Wade core. And, even if the Heat had O'Neal only for one season, Miami would have a windfall of salary-cap space to go star-caliber free agent hunting when he left.

The chances of The Diesel actually somehow ending up in Miami are remote, of course, but the possibility, however slight, entices. It's tasty to chew on.

Heck, it's almost enough to make me want to run out and rent Kazaam or slip in one of Shaq's rap CDs.

I said almost.

PCBUM

I hope Shaq gets traded, during preseason he yelled at his boss that he wanted more money and now his boss is showing him the door. I wonder if he will ever grow up?