FanHouse Fabricio Oberto

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 Deal: Phoenix sends Shaquille O'Neal to Cleveland for Sasha Pavlovic, Ben Wallace, a second-round pick in 2010 and cash.

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.

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Just hours after being traded from the Spurs to the Bucks, Fabricio Oberto is reportedly on the move yet again, this time going to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Amir Johnson. The deal has yet to be officially announced by either team, but multiple outlets, including Sean Deveney of Sporting News, who broke the story, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, cite unnamed sources within the Bucks organization confirming the deal. (Update: It's official.)

As if being traded twice in one day wasn't enough, Oberto should probably wait by the phone; his contract is only partially guaranteed, meaning the Pistons have the option of waiving him before July 1 and only be on the hook for $1.9 million of the $3.8 million he'd otherwise be owed.

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.

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One question for the San Antonio Spurs: Now what?

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.

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Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the "lig." Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.

The Rockets have the (gulp) No. 2 seed in the West right now, thanks to Luis Scola. The monster outplayed Tim Duncan (!) on Sunday, turning out 19 points, 17 rebounds, four assists and three steals. Scola's defense (with help from the overall outstanding Houston barricade) limited Big Fundamental to 8-of-22 shooting and just six rebounds.

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.

I know that headline might seem like common sense to most basketball fans, but if you've spent any time watching LeBron James play, then you've noticed that it's not always the case. A prime example of this was on the Cavs' final possession against the Spurs the other night. Take a look at LeBron's game-winning hoop (48 seconds into the clip) where he drives -- head first -- into Fabricio Oberto. The refs swallow their whistles, Oberto gets knocked on his ass, and LeBron ends up with plenty of space to hit an easy floater in the lane.

The excellent Kelly Dwyer over at the Yahoo! NBA Experts Blog has a passionate piece about how this is basically a flop by Oberto, he's glad that the refs didn't make a call, and that these types of defensive plays, where players are simply "trying to draw charges" must stop. Now normally I'd agree 100% with this argument, mainly because a) I hate the Spurs, and b) I can't stand the defensive flop in basketball. But I think in this particular instance, KD has it all wrong.