I've been thinking a bit about this topic lately--- how Shaq will impact this team. There clearly is a lack of depth, especially in the frontcourt of Miami-- they have a lot of minutes to figure out.

However, Shaq by far is the most dominant player in the league. Even if you manage to contain him, he's still good for 20ppg/10rpg. He'll get half your team in foul trouble in the process, and he'll still open things up for his teammates. Wade has room to develop, and Eddie Jones might regain his all-star form. Even though they don't have a huge amount of talent outside those three, they'll get enough scoring from them and rely on the other 9 players to play defense.

There are few teams in the east that have the size and bodies to contend with him. In the west, at least half a dozen teams there had big bodies to slow him down. I'm predicting MVP caliber numbers from him: 25+ppg/13rpg/2.5bpg/4+apg. Miami could very easily jump to #1, imho.

Posted by technomaster:

Miami could very easily jump to #1, imho.

we're talking about 82 games.
For each game he'll miss, they'll get a loss.
Each time he'll have to blow during games, they'll collapse.

This team without shaq could barely play last year hawks.

Don't overestimate him. He'll get tremendous numbers, but at the end, they won't go far in the playoffs, which is the unique goal a team should follow.

fact is, they had a young core they could have developped, to go a step further thatn last year. Instead of that, they just wanted to gamble on 2-3 solid seasons, that will lead them in salary cap hell for good.

starphucking ?

if shaq plays 75+ games, he's going to average somewhere around 28/12 on the season which should still give them a MINIMUM of 42 wins. they may be overrated a tad but they're still going to be freakin' solid. it all depends if wade takes his game to another level and all their role players step it up.