The current Sportsnation Poll in the NBA section on ESPN is Who is the best center in the NBA currently under the age of 28? Choices include: Dwight Howard Yao Ming Amare Stoudamire Andrew Bynum Tyson Chandler and YOU GUESSED IT! Dwight Howard - 60% Yao Ming - 15% Amare Stoudamire - 17% Andrew Bynum - 6% Tyson Chandler - 1% What is the deal with all the love towards Howard? I know the guy is good, but all he does is dunk and rebound. How is that better than Yao who actually has a full arsenal of moves. Even the state of TEXAS voted Howard over Yao. and last time I checked... Yao held Dwight to 16 and 8, AND beat the Magic. and amare just feeds off nash
Earlier in the season, most people here prematurely put Howard at the top over Yao. Now that the Magic and Howard have cooled off and Yao has adapted more to Adelman's offense, probably most here would return Yao to the top. The rest of the country has yet to make that adjustment. Orlando is still called a great road team even though they have trouble winning anywhere against anyone, and people still remember the numerous incredible stat lines Howard was throwing up in November and December. On Amare, he is just plain overrated and always will be as long as he plays with Steve Nash. If he ever gets separated from Nash, the rosed colored glasses will come off.
There is no link to the poll, but scroll down to the bottom right. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index?lpos=globalnav&lid=gn_NBA_NBA
When people think of "best center", they'll tend favor players who play most like Shaquille O'neal. So power, strength, and athleticism is favored over shooting. I think a lot of NBA fans will continue to be biased against Yao for this reason, unless he achieves some post season success.
When people think of centers, they think of someone who can dunk. They'd probably pick Lebron as the best center if given the choice.
Dwight Howard's stats have been declined alot lately. Yes, He still put good numbers like 21/12 but unlike earlier in the season he is simply a beast putting numbers like 30/17 and yes his team sucks lately! Best center? Is debatable between Yao or him! Amare should never ever consider in the best center category for one simple reason, HE DONT PLAY DEFENSE AT ALL! He is putting great stats now because of Nash. Take away Nash, yes Amare will still put up some good stats like 22/10 but his FG% will suffer the most, probably drop to 45-48% and his team will suck too! In the next 4-5 years, the NBA will have Bynum, Dwight, Oden(?) and a declining Yao who will still out up some good numbers like 20/9/2/2. I strongly believe the CENTER ERA will be back in the future!
1. Yao Ming 2. Bynum/ Dwight 3. Bynum/ Dwight 4. Amare Stoudamire 5. LaMarcus Aldridge Dwight is really athletic but doesn't have the postskills of Andrew Bynum, Bynum is far more fluid and is a real center standing at 7'2 over 285lbs and has a 9'5 standing reach with no shoes.
Yeah, I wasn't surprised that people would take Howard over Yao. But Chandler? He doesn't belong on the list.
Since when is a dunk worse than a fadeaway jumper? Does it count for less points? If Howard can get 22 pts a game by dunking, more power to him. If Yao could do that, we'd want him to as well. Howard scores the same number of points, shoots a higher percentage, draws tons of fouls which causes opposing defense all sorts of problems, and is at a whole different level rebounding. Why are these bad things? This would be important if we faced the Magic 30 times a season. But as it is, it's probably more important to look at what a center does in his other 80 games of the season rather than head-to-head.
