Last Season: The Cavs went 39-2 at home. They had the best record in the NBA at 66-16. They smashed their previous franchise win record of 57. But despite these accomplishments, the season has to be viewed as a failure because of their loss in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Magic. Of course LeBron James played amazing but once again the Cavs turned into a one-man show. In Game 1, LeBron scored 49 points but the Cavs lost 107-106. The Magic won the series 4-2 and sent the Cavs back to the drawing board in trying to figure out how to form a team around King James.

Acquisitions: C Shaquille O'Neal, G-F Anthony Parker, F Jamario Moon, F Leon Powe, G Danny Green

Departures: F Wally Szczerbiak, F Joe Smith, G Sasha Pavlovic, C Ben Wallace, G Tarence Kinsey, C Lorenzen Wright

Starting Five: F Anderson Varejao, F LeBron James, C Shaquille O'Neal, G Anthony Parker, G Mo Williams

Bench Mob: Delonte West, Daniel Gibson, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Jamario Moon, Leon Powe, Danny Green

Most Interesting Man in the World: Shaquille O’Neal – The man of a thousand nicknames might be the most interesting man in all of sports. You know how if a shark stops swimming, it dies? Well, I think Shaq believes that if he stops getting attention he will suffer the same fate. On the court, everywhere he has gone he has been the center of drama. Off the court, he has entertained us with his hilarious attempts at acting and rapping (I’m still trying to get my hands on his debut album Shaq Diesel). He’s also the most followed athlete on Twitter and his tweets often end up as lead stories on SportsCenter. Now that Shaq has joined with LeBron, get ready for Favre-like coverage of The Big Baryshnikov.

Over the Hill: Anthony Parker – He was a nice pick-up from Toronto who was going to be able to back-up Delonte West. But now that Delonte West is having problems with depression, it looks like Parker will be the starter. Even if Parker can stay healthy, he cannot remain the starter, or else the Cavs won’t reach their goal of the Finals.

Ready to Break Out: Jamario Moon – If the Cavs want to run the floor and have a bigger scoring threat than Varejao, they should turn to Moon. Moon doesn’t have quite the defensive presence as Varejao but could give the Cavs a different look to keep opponents off guard.

Outlook: The pressure is on the Cavs. If they don’t at least make the Finals most think LeBron will leave for greener pastures. The franchise has taken big strides in building around their star and this offseason the big splash was the addition of Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq will get start but Ilgauskas will see plenty of minutes as they try and keep O’Neal fresh throughout the season and especially heading into the playoffs. The big question mark now is at the point guard position. No one really knows what will happen with Delonte West this season and if they were to lose him they would be extremely thin at the guard spot. The Cavs certainly have the potential to win it all – but then again, they did last year as well.

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