Sporting goods stores carrying O'Neal's jerseys and player T-shirts are rushing to meet Northeast Ohio's demand for merchandise. Cardboard Heroes in Beachwood received its shipment of jerseys and T-shirts just in time for the July 4 weekend and already had a long waiting list for many styles.

"We have since reordered many different shirts and jerseys," store manager Nate Cannell said. "It's a marketing dream for us. It'd be foolish to sit back and wait to see what kind of traffic he creates, and I can't tell you how many people have come in and made comments about how fast we got the jerseys in."

Cannell said general team merchandise sales have also picked up as many customers seeking O'Neal T-shirts and jerseys end up buying hats, posters or accessories.

"After the way things ended [this season] we thought there would be a drop in sales, and there was," Cannell said. "But any time something like this happens it's great for our business."

Dick's Sporting Goods in Lyndhurst received a large shipment of adult jerseys and T-shirts but customer demand has left the store with little O'Neal merchandise left.

"We got in 16 to 20 adult jerseys and 16 to 20 player T-shirts recently, and we only have one T-shirt left and three jerseys," store manager Derek Hawranko said. "We also have a couple of kids T-shirts and jerseys, but the adult sizes have been selling constantly."

Hawranko said his store usually places the team's products in less visible areas during the off-season, but the trade for O'Neal, which sent Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, a 2010 second-round draft pick and $500,000 to the Phoenix Suns, has helped him market Cavaliers merchandise.

"When the season was over we hadn't gotten much LeBron [James] jerseys in, but when we got the [O'Neal] stuff in we put [it] all up front and people started buying it right away," Hawranko said.

Other outlets were able to get products almost immediately after O'Neal joined the Cavaliers . Once the trade became official June 25, new O'Neal jerseys were available on NBAStore.com within a day, said Kristin Conte, senior manager for NBA communications.

"The NBA's Manhattan store on Fifth Avenue had jerseys and player T-shirts in stock within a week of the trade," Conte said.

The Cavaliers' team shop at Quicken Loans Arena began presale and online ordering two days after the trade, according to the Cavaliers' communications staff, and T-shirts and jerseys were available in-store July 1. Besides replica jerseys and player T-shirts, the team shop also sells four specialty T-shirts featuring O'Neal, including one with a graphic of him and James facing the paparazzi. Medium road jerseys are already sold out on the team's Web site.

The Cavaliers said they have seen a 350 percent increase in sales this off-season as compared with 2008, with steady traffic in the team shop and online. Sales of general merchandise for other players has been strong as well, but the Cavaliers said O'Neal's T-shirts and jerseys have been the most popular items since the trade.

For the past few weeks, O'Neal's jersey has been the second-most popular jersey selling on NBAStore.com behind Kobe Bryant's, with James' third. Comparably, O'Neal's No. 32 Suns jersey was the 14th most popular choice at the end of the 2008-09 season, based on sales at the NBA store and Web site, while James' jerseys were ranked second behind Bryant. The Cavaliers ranked as the fourth largest market by sales volume last season after the Lakers, Celtics and Knicks, respectively. Although many stores have been able to quickly stock up on O'Neal merchandise, some are only just starting to order or receive their shipments.

"We have the T-shirts right now, the player T-shirts that say ' Cavaliers' on the front and have the [players's] name on the back, but we haven't gotten any jerseys yet," said Chris Haddle, assistant manager of Champs Sports in Tower City. "We plan to get them in the next month and have the order placed, we're just waiting on them."

Even though Champs Sports doesn't have the new jerseys yet, Haddle said customers frequently ask when they will be in stock.

"The day after the trade happened we had people start asking, and there's a huge demand for them almost every day," he said.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: bbraudo@plaind.com, 216-999-4670