There was a lot of activity in the NBA this week, and we're not just talking about the draft. Some of the NBA's big names and better teams were in on it.
Here's a quick look at the trades that went down and what they mean:
The Thinking: The Cavaliers get an aging O'Neal, with the hope that he can have a productive year playing alongside LeBron James. The only way this trade is a success is if the Cavaliers are the 2009-10 NBA champions. For the Suns, trading O'Neal means that they are beyond tinkering and are leaning toward turning over the personnel of a team that missed the playoffs last season.
San Antonio needed a major infusion of offensive talent this season, and it appears the team has found it. Multiple league reports indicate the Spurs have traded for Milwaukee's Richard Jefferson, sending away only bit players Bruce Bowen (age 38), Kurt Thomas (age 36) and Fabricio Oberto (age 34), according to Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Jefferson has been in Wisconsin for one year, following last June's draft day trade which sent Yi Jianlian and others to New Jersey. Jefferson has always been a moderately efficient scorer, and he should provide some relief for Tony Parker and Tim Duncan in the Spurs starting line-up. He's not quite an ace defender, but he played hard for Scott Skiles last season and hasn't missed a game in two seasons.
Sure, it's possible the Spurs can put together a nice effort on their homecourt in Game 5 on Tuesday night and push their series against the Mavericks to a sixth game in Dallas.
And maybe the Spurs could even follow that up with an unlikely Game 6 win on the road and make their first-round series a seven-gamer.
Mavericks vs. Spurs, 9:30 PM ET Dallas leads series, 3-1 | Preview
Exposed is a nasty little word in basketball and no one likes to be it or get called it.
Exposed is an especially harsh word in the NBA because pro players have spent most of their lives doing the exposing. But once we get into the playoffs, everyone is fair game – even the stars.
That's always one of the best parts of the postseason: Finding out which players rise, which players fall and which players are what they are.
Sometimes in the playoffs you find out your favorite player isn't quite as good as you thought he was or that guy you really liked in mid-January can't quite it get it done when the games turn meaningful.
A report from the US Airways Center in Phoenix, where the Spurs faced the Suns on January 29th.
PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Shaquille O'Neal is having a resurgence this season. His scoring and rebounding averages are the highest they've been since his '05-'06 championship season with the Heat, and his play has earned him a trip back to the All-Star game, an honor he didn't receive a season ago.
Perhaps the most surprising of all of Shaq's improvements has come at the free throw line, where he's shooting a repectable .628 this season -- 10 points higher than his career average. So before the game against San Antonio, when Spurs' coach Gregg Popovich was asked if he would employ the hack-a-Shaq given O'Neal's improvement at the foul line, he gave a rather interesting answer.
The nice thing about being anyone on the San Antonio Spurs is that, well, you can generally sling criticism around; it's not a characteristic trait of any particular player on that team, but after so many years of solid team play and, well, just winning, they've got some sturdier walls than most glass houses.
Hence Bruce Bowen's recent comments to the San Antonio Expressabout the Dallas Cowboys, his favorite football team. See, it appears that Bruce, like every single person in the free world except Jerry Jones and Wade Phillips, doesn't think the Cowboys really have good chemistry.
"It's very disappointing," Bowen said of Sunday's painful showing by his favorites, "but character wins out over talent any day, at least in my book. You can see how infectious certain characters can be down the end of the road."
Bowen declined to name which of the Cowboys characters he considered "infectious," but he made it clear he believed the Cowboys were doomed by self-centered players.
Well, Bowen might have declined, but allow me: Pacman Jones, Terrell Owens and Roy Williams (the receiver). Of course, Pacman was probably more of a distraction than a totally destructive locker room presence, but still, anyone who thought bringing him to the Cowboys would result in anything positive is running a fool's errand.
And while Bowen is getting a bit aggressive in calling out another sport's players, what are the Cowboys going to do? Tell him he's wrong? Because, um, he's not.
The nice thing about being anyone on the San Antonio Spurs is that, well, you can generally sling criticism around; it's not a characteristic trait of any particular player on that team, but after so many years of solid team play and, well, just winning, they've got some sturdier walls than most glass houses.
Hence Bruce Bowen's recent comments to the San Antonio Expressabout the Dallas Cowboys, his favorite football team. See, it appears that Bruce, like every single person in the free world except Jerry Jones and Wade Phillips, doesn't think the Cowboys really have good chemistry.
"It's very disappointing," Bowen said of Sunday's painful showing by his favorites, "but character wins out over talent any day, at least in my book. You can see how infectious certain characters can be down the end of the road."
Bowen declined to name which of the Cowboys characters he considered "infectious," but he made it clear he believed the Cowboys were doomed by self-centered players.
Well, Bowen might have declined, but allow me: Pacman Jones, Terrell Owens and Roy Williams (the receiver). Of course, Pacman was probably more of a distraction than a totally destructive locker room presence, but still, anyone who thought bringing him to the Cowboys would result in anything positive is running a fool's errand.
And while Bowen is getting a bit aggressive in calling out another sport's players, what are the Cowboys going to do? Tell him he's wrong? Because, um, he's not.
Earlier today, Ziller mentioned how the Celtics wasted no time in offering recent Clippers castoff Corey Maggette a place on their championship roster, but it now appears that another title contender is likely to land him instead. Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski reports that the San Antonio Spurs are the front-runners to land Maggette, with a multi-year contract offer for the mid-level exception expected to be forthcoming.
The Spurs seem like a better fit than the Celtics for Corey. If he's taking less money to compete for a title -- and unless he wants to go somewhere like Golden State or Philadelphia for substantially more money, that's what he's doing -- he's going to want to see the floor. Maggette is a legitimate starter in this league, and with the Spurs more than happy to bring Manu Ginobili off the bench, Corey will get plenty of minutes and plenty of shot attempts. I don't think that would necessarily be the case in Boston, where he'd undoubtedly have a tough time cracking that starting five.
The naysayers point out that Corey has been a defensive liability at times in his career, and that, specifically in the Spurs' offense, he'll need to dramatically improve his three-point shooting from the corners. To both of these assertions, I say: hogwash.
An NBA spokesman, commenting on the play involving Brent Barry and Derek Fisher at the end of Game 4 between the Lakers and Spurs, stated that, "With the benefit of instant replay, it appears a foul should have been called." While that might make some astute (if admittedly petty) observers of the game happy, I think it sets a bad precedent and will only create more controversy for a league that already has so many of its foul calls questioned on a nightly basis.
If we're going to look at a call that could have decided the game, why not examine the play before that? Derek Fisher's shot on that possession (with seconds left on the clock) was ruled to be an airball, when it clearly (again, with the benefit of instant replay) hit the rim. The shot clock should have been reset, which would have forced the Spurs to foul, which could have pushed the Laker lead up to four. Had that play been ruled correctly, we likely wouldn't even be talking about a controversy on the game's final play.
Do you see the problem with this? We could go back through every possession and find plenty of calls throughout the game that were questionable. Because the game's final possession is always magnified, the league felt the need to comment on it. But they really shouldn't have. Not unless they want whining about officiating to take over the game.
The Rotation is a weekly study on the NBA by one of our All-Star voices. In rotation this week is Brett Edwards.
The playoff series between the Hornets and the Spurs has been consistently one-sided so far -- the home side. The local team has won each of the six games by at least 11 points, the first time such a statistical anomaly has occurred in NBA history. I think that's likely to change tonight though, because for all of the Hornets talent, the Spurs' collective experience is likely to be the deciding factor.
It's been argued that experience is overrated in the NBA playoffs, and Chris Paul was used as the poster boy and case study to prove the argument to be true. But playing well individually and winning home games is one thing.
The Hornets have really been the better team this entire series. They've largely stuck to what has worked for them all season, while the Spurs have had to make some substantial adjustments from game to game. But now the Hornets will have to prove they can evolve: For an upstart team to eliminate a team with a ring in a Game 7 -- even in your own building -- is something else entirely.
There was a lot of activity in the NBA this week, and we're not just talking about the draft. Some of the NBA's big names and better teams were in on it.
San Antonio needed a major infusion of offensive talent this season, and it appears the team has found it. Multiple league reports indicate 
One question for the San Antonio Spurs: Now what?
Exposed is a nasty little word in basketball and no one likes to be it or get called it.
A report from the US Airways Center in Phoenix, where the Spurs faced the Suns on January 29th.
The nice thing about being anyone on the San Antonio Spurs is that, well, you can generally sling criticism around; it's not a characteristic trait of any particular player on that team, but after so many years of solid team play and, well, just winning, they've got some sturdier walls than most glass houses.
Earlier today, 
