Jack Ramsey said Yao is likely to be the next best big man

Low-post game is left high, dry in NBA today
Pro basketball: Most of the league's big men seem to prefer playing away from the basket, rather than underneath it.
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By Milton Kent
Sun Staff
Originally published May 6, 2003



Once upon a time, when Jack Ramsay coached in Portland in the 1970s, his Trail Blazers could do virtually anything a team could be asked to do.
Lionel Hollins brought the speed, Bobby Gross had the intermediate and long-range jump shot, Maurice Lucas was the enforcer, and Dave Twardzik supplied punch off the bench.

But, above all, Ramsay had a bona fide, honest-to-goodness, back-to-the-basket threat in center Bill Walton, who passed and scored out of the low post, leading the Trail Blazers to the 1977 NBA title.

A generation later, Ramsay, now an NBA analyst for ESPN, looks around and sees an entirely different game from the one he coached. This year's playoffs, with the obvious exception of Shaquille O'Neal and the occasional inside contributions of Tim Duncan, are marked by the absence of a low-post presence, which has become as much a thing of the past as the wild hair style Walton wore back then.

"There are all kinds of ways to score, and, in fact, the old low-post game where players put it into the post and you had two guys cutting off, that got to be somewhat monotonous," Ramsay said. "Now, you have all kinds of ways to score. Guys can score from the outside; teams push the ball and pull up and shoot it deep or drive it to the basket. You have teams that post up their guards. You have a great versatility in the game that I think is good."

Versatility in the NBA game may be good, but for those who remember what it was like to throw the ball down to the low block to the likes of Walton, Moses Malone, Bill Russell, Willis Reed and Nate Thurmond to watch them score, recent NBA history has been found wanting.

Since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won his second scoring title in the 1971-72 season, a traditional low-post player has been the scoring champ only twice -O'Neal in 1995 and 2000 - following a period when centers ruled the league.

(Utah's Adrian Dantley was the league's top scorer in 1981 and 1984 as an undersized power forward who scored mostly close to the basket, and San Antonio's David Robinson won the scoring championship in 1994 with a mix of low-post shots and foul-line jumpers.)

The current roll call of classic low-post threats is pretty much limited to Cleveland's Zydrunas Ilgauskas and O'Neal, the dominant force in the Los Angeles Lakers' three-year title run, with occasional on-the-block appearances by Duncan.

Indeed, players like Sacramento's Chris Webber, Indiana's Jermaine O'Neal, Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki, Minnesota's Kevin Garnett and Portland's Rasheed Wallace - all of whom probably would have been centers in the days of Walton and Abdul-Jabbar, given their heights and weights - are as likely to be out on the wing as in the post.

"It's all about what you want to be and how you see yourself," Garnett said. "I always wanted to be considered not the average big man, so I made strides and formed a vision within myself to do just that."

Nowadays, the post-up game down low is as likely to be played by guards. The Mavericks' Nick Van Exel, for instance, is as likely to take a defender down on the block as Nowitzki is to launch a three-pointer.

The trend is likely to continue. Consider that high school phenom LeBron James, who got into trouble earlier this year for wearing a Wes Unseld replica jersey, is an inch taller and about 5 pounds lighter than the 6 feet 7, 245 pounds of the former Bullets center when he entered the league in 1968.

Yet, James is no more likely to play in the post than Unseld would have been to hoist a three-pointer, had the line been around during his NBA heyday.

No one is quite sure when the big shift started to take place, but there is no shortage of answers for why it's happened.

One easy answer for the change is that, just like everyone else, big players wanted to be like Mike. As Michael Jordan's fame began to spread, the natural inclination is to think that more players, big and small, tried to emulate him, to the point of going out to the perimeter.

It's a nice theory, but Jordan isn't buying it.

"What I am an example of is versatility, a guy that can play multi positions," Jordan said during the All-Star break. "I would not say that I originated that. I think Magic Johnson, even Oscar Robertson back in his day, originated it. We more or less brought it back into focus and made it an impact situation to where you can change an outcome of a game.

"And Magic changed the outcome of a game with the Lakers when he could play the center position, the small forward, power forward, point guard position, and still win with it. ... Larry [Bird] expanded it, or brought it more into fruition, made it a common thing. What every general manager looks for now is that type of versatility. So I won't take that credit. I think it was there before me."

Even if Jordan doesn't feel responsible, the versatility of today's new big man is a contributing factor.

"You try make it as tough as possible for the defense to guard you," said Jermaine O'Neal. "If you're able to step out and shoot and put the ball on the floor and drive to the basket, obviously that puts the defense in a bad way, as well as having the ability to post up.

"When you get a guy who is stronger than you, you want to face him up and go around him, because he's not quick enough to guard you. If you feel like he's not strong enough to guard you, then you're taking him to the post. You have to have both of those mentalities to really outplay the opposing defenders."

Structurally, observers say, the way the game is played now has dictated where the points are scored. Some, like former New York Knicks coach turned TNT analyst Jeff Van Gundy, say new defensive rules that permit a zone to be played make it more palatable for big players to abandon the low post.

"Before, you could have [weak-side] defenders lifted up [waiting to see where the ball went before committing on defense]," Van Gundy said. "Now, it's hard to get the ball in a good spot, unless you have a mammoth presence like [Shaquille]O'Neal. That post-up game is harder to run with that short clock [shorter possession time after a foul] and the new defensive guidelines."

Others, like Indiana coach Isiah Thomas, point to the presence of the three-point line as a culprit. Thomas says the relative closeness of the line, particularly in college, where it has been 19 feet, 9 inches from the basket, creates a sense of false bravado that practically implores players, big or small, to shoot from the perimeter.

"There's no incentive to really score inside anymore, so the breakdown between post and pivot play at a very young age is gone," Thomas said. "By the time you get to the NBA, you're trying to teach post and pivot play to a group that has gotten their three points from the perimeter as opposed to getting it from inside and going to the free-throw line."

But fear not, low-post fans, for help could be on the way. Ramsey said Houston center Yao Ming is likely to be the next best Big Man on the Low Block.

And future Waltons, Abdul-Jabbars or Shaqs could be on someone's playground.

"If you get a Shaquille O'Neal or a Tim Duncan, you have to go to the low post," said TNT analyst and former player Charles Barkley. "It depends on the guys you have. Those guys are on the box, Hakeem [Olajuwon] was on the box; I played on the box; Karl Malone is on the box. It's just a matter of the players."



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