Shaq Says Blazers Tried to Trade for Him

The deal that sent Shaquille O'Neal to the Cavaliers last week had been rumored since the trade deadline back in February, so it wasn't exactly a huge surprise. But had Shaq gone to another team -- like, say, the Portland Trail Blazers -- that would have been a pretty shocking development, mainly because we hadn't heard even a whisper of that being a possibility.

Apparently, though, the Blazers were indeed in talks with the Suns to bring O'Neal to Portland. This semi-bombshell comes from Shaq himself, who also says that the talks came to an end once he informed Steve Kerr he wasn't interested in being sent to the Blazers.

"During the middle of the season, Steve said Portland was interested," O'Neal told SI.com. "He said was I interested in going to Portland? I told him no, so he stopped that."

Shaq often chooses to believe that he's more in control than he actually is, but in reality, all he could do if he didn't want to play in Portland was threaten retirement -- because he, like most NBA players, has no official no-trade clause in his contract.

A Blazers' source in the same article denied his team's interest, saying that the club wasn't in "go-for-it mode," and with two viable options in the middle in Joel Przybilla and Greg Oden, there wasn't a need to make this type of blockbuster deal.

Regardless of how close this came to actually happening, it's an interesting proposition. Brandon Roy has been mentioned as moving into the elite class of shooting guards, so pairing him with O'Neal in the middle might have immediately pushed Portland to the level of title contenders.

More likely, though, is that (depending on what they had to give up to get him) the team would still have been a year or two away from contending, even with a force like O'Neal in the starting lineup. And since plenty of experts think that the Blazers are a year or two away as currently constructed, it's probably best that they didn't roll the dice on Shaq.