FanHouse ShaquilleONeal

ORLANDO -- If Dwight Howard wants to keep that Superman moniker -- if he wants to deliver on his promise to bring an NBA title to Orlando -- he better turn his game up another notch real soon.

Playing Shaquille O'Neal -- who is well past his prime and 14 years older -- to an uninspired standstill like he did Wednesday night won't get his team anywhere close to the Finals again.

He knows it. And his coach certainly does, too. The Defensive Player of the Year and defending rebounding champion has been rather pedestrian lately.

ORLANDO -- Mo Williams just scoffed at the suggestion Wednesday afternoon that his Cleveland Cavaliers won't be as good this season because of the changes they made to the roster.

The biggest change was adding center Shaquille O'Neal. The Cavs won a league-best 66 games last season before losing in the Eastern Conference final to the Magic, their opponent tonight.

"It's too early to tell anything,'' Williams said after practice, almost miffed at the suggestion that they have gone backward. "But obviously, we can be better. We have the personnel to be better. You can't make any assumptions this early.''

ORLANDO -- If the state of Texas is planning on any commercials during NBA games over the next week, officials might want to hold off. Cleveland's Daniel Gibson will be a walking advertisement.

Just in time for Wednesday's big nationally televised game at Orlando, the guard has shaved onto the left side of his head a big map of Texas with a star on it. While it is the Lone Star State, Gibson, who is from Houston and a big baseball fan, calls it an "Astros star.''

"I'm the first one,'' Gibson claimed about being the initial NBA player with a state shaved onto his head for a game.

It's hard not to like Shaquille O'Neal, the most compelling NBA player of his era and arguably the best center in history. His love of the spotlight, his often-outrageous, sometimes-egotistical, always-entertaining behavior made him a must-see attraction since he entered the league with Orlando a long, long time ago.

It's why there will be some sadness in seeing him get destroyed on his former home court Wednesday night by Dwight Howard.

I wrote in September that perhaps there would be no worthy center to start for the West in the All-Star Game.

But this isn't the way I want to see that solved. Do it on the court, not with the ballot.

When the All-Star ballot came out Tuesday, Phoenix power forward Amar'e Stoudemire strangely was listed as a center. Yes, Stoudemire has played center before, but he's started all eight games for Suns this season at power forward, with Channing Frye being the starting center.

It is true the ballot, which was selected by six media members from around the country, had to be decided upon before the season began in order to provide time for printing. But it has been apparent since at least September that Frye would Phoenix's starting center, with Stoudemire at power forward.

Rome was not built in a day. But in two days, the NBA's version of Camelot sure has looked like the barbarians are at the gate.

OK, I'll try not to lob anymore historical metaphors at you. But you might want to get ready for a whole lot of consternation from the great state of Ohio, because the team with the best record in the league last year has started out 0-2. The Cavaliers fell to the Raptors in Toronto 101-91 to remain winless, and the same problems that surfaced Tuesday night in their loss to the Celtics reared their head again.

ORLANDO -- To many who follow the NBA, it doesn't seem that long ago that Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer led the Detroit Pistons -- the famed Bad Boys -- to their second consecutive NBA title in 1990, cementing their place among the great teams in league history.

It was two days after Jrue Holiday was born.

Holiday, a rookie guard for the Philadelphia 76ers, isn't just the youngest player in the NBA this season. He also earned the distinction of being the first person born in the 1990's to be on an NBA roster.

That makes a lot of us feel old.

A to Z.

It sounds like the 1952 NBA All-Star Game, which featured Paul Arizin and Max Zaslofsky.

It sounds like the 1971 champion Milwaukee Bucks, who had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Zopf.

It sounds like the history of Lithuanian centers, from Arvydas Sabonis to Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

It also sounds like a good way to take a look at the 2009-10 NBA season:

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Friday, there are 18 days remaining.

Most current players don't last as long as the stars of the 1970s and 80s did. As the game becomes faster and stronger, players who reach their 30s have a tougher time keeping up (with some obvious exceptions). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had no such problem.

KAJ was selected for all but one NBA All-Star Game between 1970 and 1989, and he played in an NBA record 18 of them. By my count, there's only two current stars who can catch him.

The Cavaliers are one of three teams, along with the Celtics and the Magic, that most experts have favored to come out of the Eastern Conference. Cleveland, however, comes across as a bit more confident than the others.

What gives us that impression? Only the fact that they've printed playoff tickets for every possible series, and included them in their packages that were already sent out to season ticket-holders.

This included, of course, tickets for the NBA Finals.