Aristotle Meets the King. | Draft Day.

On a Draft Day deal with potential title implications, Shaquille O’Neal joins LeBron James in Cleveland. (Phoenix, giving up on their ill-advised Shaq experiment, pick up Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, and the 46th pick — so, this is a money move, basically.) To my mind, this is a solid move by the Cavs. Shaq may be in the tail-end of his career, but he’s still good enough and strong enough to draw double-teams down low, which is exactly what Cleveland was missing this past post-season. Pick up a pure shooter or two to spread the wings and keep the D on Lebron honest, and the Cavs are looking deadly.

Other than Shaq, the other major move of late was Richard Jefferson to the Spurs for Bruce Bowen and Kurt Thomas, which puts a stop to San Antonio’s slide in the West almost immediately, and should make them a contender again if everybody stays healthy. And ex-Knick and now-journeyman Jamal Crawford looks headed to Atlanta from Sacramento, where he’ll undoubtedly put a lot of points on the board…but I don’t really see him making that team a top-tier contender. At least in the Knick days, his D was atrocious.

Speaking of New York, they tried to move up the draft to No. 5, but now look to be hoping somebody decent falls to 8 tonight. They may also be trying to get Darko Milicic for Quentin Richardson, which sounds iffy on paper. But perhaps Darko has improved since his days as a notable draft day bust. In any case, we’ll see how it all shakes out tonight at the Garden.

Update: The Knicks buy a late first round pick — 29 — from the Lake Show. “‘Certain teams, they may want to preserve cap space for the next year or two and they may need to add players,’ Kupchak said. ‘A good way to add talent at a fixed price is to have a lot of draft choices and then you can still maintain cap space a year from now.‘” And we all know what happens a year from now

Update 2: Donnie gets Darko, and Arizona PF Jordan Hill at #8. [Full Draft.]