Phoenix Suns Basketball Team

The NBA's traveling carnival came to town Thursday, tilt-a-whirl breaks and cotton candy shots everywhere. It rolled in here after owning Boston, owning Miami, owning Philadelphia, turning the early season into its own Disneyland. "This is a fun team," chortled the Phoenix Suns Leandro Barbosa early Thursday evening at Staples Center. "We play fun basketball." Then the diamond-studded locals wandered in, wise to the midway and wary of the rides and unimpressed with the barking.

Guess who's coming to dinner. If a Lakers Spectre rises over the West, lots of people saw it coming, including the Phoenix Suns, who blew themselves up in advance. Junking the offense no one could guard but which was comprised of Munchkins, the Suns acquired Shaquille O'Neal, who's still a 7-footer, even at 36. It was a bombshell that still reverberates and Shaq's Suns haven't even played Kobe Bryant's Lakers yet this season.

PHOENIX -- Shaquille O'Neal wrestled and writhed, diving for the ball all over the court and trying to squeeze a few more gallons of diesel from a body running as much on adrenaline as on muscle memory. In his first appearance as a member of the Phoenix Suns and first game since Jan. 21, O'Neal sometimes looked like the dominant Shaq of old. Sometimes he looked just plain old, lumbering upcourt while the game around him accelerated to a breathtaking pace.

While Fidel Castro's decision to step down after nearly five decades atop the Cuban government has left the communist country's political future in doubt, at least one crown jewel of the revolution -- baseball -- figures to be unaffected by the transfer in power. "This announcement is a formality, is no surprise in Cuba, and should not affect baseball at all," said Peter Bjarkman, a pro-revolution author who maintains a website devoted to baseball on the island.

Shaquille O'Neal, learning a new offense and working his way into shape after a hip injury, is unlikely to play when the Phoenix Suns visit the Golden State Warriors tonight. After returning from Oakland, the team will decide whether O'Neal will play against the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday night in Phoenix. "I want to be a little more in tune before I step out on the court, because as you watch this team without me, they're like a great flowing machine," O'Neal said after practice Tuesday.

Shaquille O'Neal's trade from Miami to Phoenix has been the biggest news in the sports betting world this week and the deal has forced oddsmakers to adjust the Suns' postseason numbers. According to Bodoglife.com, the odds on the Suns winning the Western Conference before the trade were 5-2; after the deal they improved to 2-1. The odds on Phoenix winning the NBA championship before the trade were 4-1; now they are 7-2.

PHOENIX -- The Diesel cometh, once more. As always, you could almost feel the ground tremble as Shaquille O'Neal changed teams Wednesday, becoming a Phoenix Sun, however improbable that was. Not that it matched O'Neal's reception in Orlando in 1992 when he got off the plane wearing Mickey Mouse ears, or Los Angeles in 1996 when Lakers general manager Jerry West compared signing him to the birth of his children, or Miami in 2004 when Shaq squirted the crowd at a rally with a water gun.

'Tis the season to resurrect a little feud. For the first time in seemingly forever, it's not Kobe vs. Shaq on Christmas Day, thanks to NBA and ABC finally moving away from that tired story line. But controversy seekers won't be too disappointed -- there's still Phil Jackson vs. Mike D'Antoni today at Staples Center.

Accept it: Kevin Garnett is not coming to the Lakers. Definitely not in the four-team trade that would have involved the Lakers, Minnesota, Indiana and Boston. And, it became apparent Wednesday, not in the possible Lakers-Timberwolves trade that emerged as an alternative when the stars didn't align for the bigger deal. The Timberwolves want draft picks and young players and figured they could do better than the Lakers' offer of Lamar Odom -- and his $27.

The Phoenix Suns' Steve Nash dribbled aimlessly in the final seconds of the final game of his team's Western Conference semifinals series Friday night, San Antonio's Bruce Bowen in his face where he had been most of the night, victory out of reach.