Dear Shaq, Please Stay Away

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The NBA offseason is always pretty crazy, but no offseason can hold a candle to this one.  So many things have happened since the clock struck midnight on July 1st.  LeBron is heading to Miami, Amar’e is taking his talents to the Big Apple and even the great Darko Milicic has been signed.  Before many of these decisions were made there were so many wild rumors out there.  Rumors of LeBron going to New York single-handedly drove Madison Square Garden stock like 10 percent.  It got to the point where the best things for us to do was to just ignore all the rumors and wait for things to shake out.  Despite this there is one rumor out there that I can’t just ignore.

The Celtics have had a busy offseason.  The team got the ball rolling by re-signing Paul Pierce and Ray Allen.  With those two back the next step for the Celtics was to find a big man to take over following Rasheed Wallace’s impending retirement (hopefully) and Kendrick Perkins’ knee injury that will cause him to miss a lot of the upcoming season.  The Celtics ended up getting Jermaine O’Neal to be the starter and then a significant bench player when Perkins eventually returns.  While O’Neal did look broken down in the playoff series against the Celtics he looks to be the best option out there.  After that signing it seemed like the Celtics could move onto looking for a back-up wing player, but now word is that the Celtics are looking at Shaquille O’Neal.  Please wait a moment while I try to gather my composure.

Ok, I’m ready.  This would be a rare awful move by Celtics President Danny Ainge.  Ainge has built the team up from one of the worst in the league to one of the best.  He convinced Seattle to throw in Big Baby in the Ray Allen trade, gave up only Al Jefferson for Kevin Garnett and stole Rajon Rondo from the Suns.  Signing Shaq would be a move that would reek of desperation.

Now don’t get me wrong I use to love Shaq when I was younger.  His presence alone made me a fan of the Magic and then the Lakers.  He was an unstoppable force and he will go down as an all-time great, but at this stage of his career the negatives of having him far outweigh the positives.

The only positive things that can really be expected from Shaq are a decent post-game and a big body on defense.  Those two positives won’t make up for all the negatives such as him being injury-prone, having a huge ego, clogging the paint and slowing down the offense.  The last negative is what would really make this a bad decision for the Celtics because they are at their best when Rondo is pushing the ball.  The fast break is a lot less effective when it’s guaranteed that one your players won’t be making it up and down the court every possession.

LeBron asking Shaq if he could stop sucking so much

The Celtics should know better than to sign Shaq after they watched his affect on the Cavs up-close in the playoffs last season.  The Cavs were completely restricted when Shaq was in the game because they couldn’t run and up down the floor.  Then when Shaq would come out and either Anderson Varejao or J.J. Hickson would come in the Cavs were noticeably more effective.  It’s worth mentioning as well that there has been no talk of the Cavs looking to re-sign him even before LeBron left.  The Suns also went from a non-playoff team with Shaq to being two games away from the NBA Finals the year after they traded Shaq.

The Celtics aren’t the only team that should stay away from Shaq, every team should.  It just doesn’t make any sense to take a chance on Shaq anymore because twice we have seen how this story plays out.  Both times the experiments failed and Shaq was sent out of town.

Youth and athleticism is what the Celtics need not more age and injury concerns.  They need to forget about Shaq and focus on trying to get a player like Matt Barnes that could fill a role and provide some good depth.  But if Shaq did come to Boston then I already have the perfect nickname for him, The Big Shaqrock.