We all know Shaq – he’s literally everywhere. He’s on commercials advising us to use Icy Hot and The General car insurance. He’s on TNT’s Inside the NBA mumbling half-baked basketball analysis. He’s on soda cans. He’s on rap albums, movies, posters, podcasts, and magazine covers.
Most of us know a decent amount about his playing career too. Drafted No. 1 overall out of LSU in 1992. Four sterling seasons with the Orlando Magic, back in Shaq’s sleek and slim days. Then eight seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers, where Shaq morphed into arguably the most dominant player in the league in the post-Jordan days. After an MVP award and three championships, Shaq moved on to the Miami Heat for three and a half seasons, where he won another championship as the Robin to a burgeoning Dwayne Wade’s Batman. He spent a year and a half with the Phoenix Suns, where he made his final NBA All-Star team in 2009. And he finished his career in a reserve role with the Boston Celtics for the 2010-11 season, before calling it quits on a 19-year, future-Hall of Fame career.
Except there’s one brief, overlooked year of Shaq’s career that people seem to forget. It’s especially strange that Shaq’s forgotten year was spent alongside the face of basketball – LeBron James, who won one of his four NBA MVP awards that year. Yes, Shaq spent the 2009-10 season as the 38-year-old starting center for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Here’s the story.
Neurotically eyeing LeBron James’ potential 2010 free agency, the Cavaliers had been going about getting James to stick around in the most Cavaliers way possible – by acquiring over-the-hill veterans to add to a roster already criminally devoid of talent. For the 2008-09 season, this took the form of Ben Wallace, who rounded out a Cavs starting five of James, Mo Williams, Delonte West, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas. That team somehow went a mind-boggling 66-16 in the regular season (literally all LeBron) to earn the No. 1 seed in the East. The team then swept their way through the first two rounds of the playoffs to set up an Conference Finals match-up with the Orlando Magic.
Astute NBA fans will remember that this was the year that LeBron’s Cavs were supposed to meet Kobe’s Lakers in the NBA Finals, a series that would have rained money and eyeballs down on the NBA, Nike, TV partners, and anyone else you can think of even tangentially touching the league. Remember where the league stood around the time of the 2008-09 season. Everywhere you looked, the raging debate was always: Kobe or LeBron?
Kobe was a few years into his reign as the clear-cut best player in the NBA, but there had been questions and hurdles for him to clear recently. Things hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing for Kobe and the Lakers since Shaq (I swear we’ll get back to him soon) left town after the 2003-04 season. And Shaq had won a title since the breakup – Kobe hadn’t. So even though Kobe had dropped 81 and finally won his elusive MVP award, his position as the unquestioned top dog of the NBA was vulnerable. Meanwhile, LeBron had absolutely lit the league on fire since he entered it in 2003, and his greatness had finally gotten to the point where he could single-handedly will an otherwise comically bad team to the top seed in the East.
Unfortunately, the Magic beat the Cavaliers in six games. It was an absolutely crushing series that was far, far closer than 4-2 suggests. The margins of victory for each game were as follows: one, one, two, two (OT), 10, and three. That’s absolutely nuts, and LeBron was both the leading scorer and assister in every single one of those games – Cavs and Magic. Kobe Bryant and the Lakers would go on to easily defeat the Magic in the Finals 4-1, and repeat the next year as well.
Ben Wallace had been a solid defensive presence in his one year for the Cavaliers, but Cleveland decided that he wasn’t quite the big splash name that they needed to pair with LeBron to get the team over the hump. They also apparently decided that the 34-year-old Wallace wasn’t quite old enough.
Enter Shaq (see, I told you we’d get back to him). Shaq was in the middle of a decently successful stint in Phoenix, but let’s be honest – he wasn’t exactly a natural fit for the Suns’ “Seven Seconds or Less,” run-n’-gun offense. Shaq was also a $20 million cap hit for the coming 2009-10 season.
So the Suns and Cavs got to work and ironed out a deal. Cleveland sent Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, and a 2010 second-round pick to the Suns in exchange for O’Neal. Shaq seemed quite happy with the deal, tweeting: “Win da ring for da king! Luv my team, Cavs baby!”
Things started out well enough for the Cavaliers, as they went 44-14 through their first 58 games. But in game 59 on Feb. 25, Shaq severely sprained his thumb when Glen “Big Baby” Davis contested his shot. Shaq, who had been averaging 12 points and nearly 7 rebounds, needed surgery and missed the rest of the regular season, though he vowed to return in the playoffs. The Cavs, who had just traded away longtime center Zydrunas Ilgauskas to make room for O’Neal, were left scrambling for a big man, but managed to pull things together and finish the season 17-7 without him.
Just like he promised, Shaq was back for the playoffs. But it wasn’t to be – he never fully got back into game shape, and let’s be honest, it was Shaq at age 38. After a five-game series win against the Bulls in the opening round, the Cavs bowed out in six games to the Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals. You might remember that, around that time, there were also rampant rumors that the Cavs had fallen apart because Delonte West had slept with LeBron James’ mother, but that’s a story for another time.
Unsurprisingly, LeBron left the Cavs for the Miami Heat that summer. I can still remember where I was when I heard, and I bet you do too. As for Shaq, he signed with the Boston Celtics and played out one final year there before retiring.
If you think about it, the NBA landscape might have been drastically different had Shaq not sustained his injury. Speaking in 2016 about his lone season in Cleveland, Shaq said, “When I was in Cleveland, we were in first place. Big Baby breaks my hand and I had to sit out five weeks late in the year. I come back finally in the first round of the playoffs, and we lost to Boston in the second round. I was upset. I know for a fact if I was healthy, we would have gotten it done that year and won a ring.” Also remember that there was again the potential for the Cavs-Lakers Finals that the NBA world had been robbed of the year prior – the Lakers once again had done their part by getting there. Can you imagine the endless storylines of LeBron and Shaq vs. Kobe in the finals?
And who knows. With a title, LeBron likely stays in Cleveland and never goes to Miami. Everything would’ve been different.
