<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Seriously, shut this mess down. A few moves here and there, and you could have a scary, scary team to work with in 2008-09. Good-scary. Continue apace? Bad-scary. Shaquille O'Neal is off to Los Angeles to have further testing done on a dodgy hip that he hurt a few days before Christmas while diving for a loose ball. Nobody knows the extent of the injury other than to say that it could be worse than previously diagnosed (bursitis of the left hip). If it turns up that O'Neal has anything, anything wrong with his left side beyond just a little inflammation, then the Heat need send the Big Fella to bed, and not think twice about it. We're talking about the 8-26 Miami Heat, in case you forgot. Owners of the second-worst record in the NBA. And this isn't some once-admired group of kids looking in on the playoff bracket from outside, like the Bulls or Jazz. Rather, this is a team on pace to win 20 games. 19.27, actually, but you know Pat Riley will squeeze that extra .73 of a win out of them. After that, Dwyane Wade needs to take a seat. The Heat guard hasn't looked right all season, he's clearly not recovered from left knee and (especially) shoulder surgeries; and while he didn't exactly suffer through the "indignity" of coming off the bench against the Grizzlies yesterday, it wasn't far off. Sit the man. If it looks and feels like tanking, then bring him back in late March. Same goes for Shaq. There's no shame in not bringing these guys back until they're both fully recovered. In the meantime, you lose the games you were already going to lose, the youngsters get some minutes, and you start over in 2008-09. (Also, I'm well aware that losing games doesn't always lead to a draft pick commensurate with your lousy record, but it doesn't hurt. And I don't want to see the comments section littered with hardasses squawking about how the NBA needs to do a better job to get rid of tanking teams, because last year's "tankers" in Boston and Milwaukee got the lowest-possible -- fifth and sixth in the draft, with the worst and second-worst records -- first round picks they could have last year. The lottery system did its job, in case you didn't notice) In the meantime, Shaq had to realize that his season needs to start sometime in July, and Pat Riley needs to do something beyond just handing this guy 20 million dollars every year and hoping he's in at least passable shape by training camp. Shaq's hardly morbidly obese, a compulsive eater, or horribly out of shape (Riles says he's down to 321, which is pretty good, honestly); but you wouldn't hand a former drunk or drug addict a check every two weeks and just hope for the best. You follow up on him. You make sure that he knows that just working as hard as everyone else isn't enough. Shaq now needs to work harder than his opponents, because he can't use pure athletic skill to dominate them (or even break even with them on both ends of the ball) any more. This is on Riley, the coach and the GM, to make the right decisions. If certain things fall into place (a healthy and motivated Shaq, one of the NBA's best players working at full strength, a high draft pick, a competent rotation), he might have something special on his hands. He better make do with this lot, because Shaq is nigh-on-untradeable and there isn't a lot of room around the edges to work with. Jason Williams' expiring contract may fetch something, while youngsters like Daequan Cook and Chris Quinn are looking solid, but there's nothing on this team that anyone would want besides Wade. So the best Riley can do is work with the players he brought in, and the situation he created for himself. And, if he keeps returning Wade to help his team slog its way to home loss against the Grizzlies, or bringing Shaq back for the do-or-die tilt with the Knicks on the 19th, then he deserves what he gets.</div> Source: Yahoo Sports It makes a lot of sense and you could say the same for a few teams in the league taking this approach.
