It's been a few years or a decade lol since the NBA had legit star centers, Now it seems they are returning. All these young centers seem like they have a legit chance to be the best big man in the game and that's crazy because there's 4 that are either 1st or 2nd year guys to go along with Cousins and if you want to include Anthony Davis as a center (I do) that make 6 legit star bigs. Nikola Jokic Karl Anthony-Towns Joel Embiid Kristaps Porzingas All for guys bring something differnt to the game but are dominating in some form. The most intriguing young center imo is Jokic. This guy is a monster and seems to just fill the stat sheet up. In January he's avg 23/11/5 while shooting 42% on threes. It's a great time in the NBA to have so many great guards but the center is making it's way back and if Embiid can say healthy we might have another era of great centers like the 80s and early 90s.
Very true, especially when you consider other guys: -Marc Gasol -Rudy Gobert -DeAndre Jordan -Hassan Whiteside -Demarcus Cousins -Anthony Davis -Al Horford -Jonas V. -Steven Adams -Andrew Bogut The center position is pretty damn deep..I think 2nd to only PGs.
Ya it's crazy I forgot about Marc Gasol he's def on that list of mine he's a complete player at the position. As much as I like gobert he just doesn't have the offensive game/potential of the guys I mentioned, but after this 7 he's the next center I would take.
Nikola Jokic Karl Anthony-Towns Joel Embiid Kristaps Porzingas Are any of these guys even starting at center? I get Nurkic & Jokic confused, I'm not even sure which is which, so at best, 3/4 start at center. And the very fact anyone might consider this group to be classified as centers speaks to the fact that the center position is dead.
You know what else is dead? The post up fade away. I think AD is the only one I can really think of that even attempts a post up fade away. I miss Dream. His fade away was a thing of beauty..
Cmon dude you know all those guys are centers just because they play different than Hakeem doesn't mean there not talented young centers. Embiid clearly plays center same with KAT and Jokic. Porzingas plays PF but there's a lot of chatter that he is going to be moved to centers which is his natural position in the NBA moving forward anyways. And Porzingas shoots the fade away jumpers all the time same with KAT and Embiid. The centers position is not dead at all it's the trob feat it's been in over a decade. These guys all have potential to be top 10 players in the league and That's crazy because te center position hasn't had a top 10 player since Dwight in Orlando and all those guys are all better than Dwight on offense in there first or second years. I love Hakeem he's the best ever but dont get it confused because of bias all these new age centers are more like Hakeem than the old schools bnagers. Hakeem was the proto type for modern center he just played 25 years earlier. All these guys have a little Hakeem it' looks different but they are all all around ball players just like Hakeem.
I'd say there are some good young bigmen. But there's no good distinction b/w forwards and centers b/c the inside-out offense isn't viable. The only time to go to a postup now is when you have a severe mismatch. That arises more from a team's ability to goad defensive switches than it does from pure post skill. Even on the defensive side, you don't need someone huge to anchor the defense. You just need someone who is strong enough not to get exploited, tall enough to contest layups, and very importantly also quick enough to switch on PnRs. So guys like Draymond, Lebron, and Harrell are fine for that. If a guy is taller, it helps with contesting layups, but it's usually a negative for ability to switch on PnRs. Because the inside out game is so much worse than the perimeter game, it doesn't matter that he'll be able to post a little better.
you just wait until we see a real super team when some combination of giannis/kawhi/davis/embiid team up (prolly on spurs) and proceed to completely destroy everything we thought we knew about the league
Today's NBA hasn't been about big man because we have had an era of bad NBA centers either without offensive game and/or shooting 40% from the FT line. But the new generation can shoot 3s, hit 75% from the FT line and can pass. It will be very different and exciting
There are no dominant centers in the league, and there haven't been for a while. You can't call yourself dominant and have losing seasons year after year. Shaq comes in and goes: 41, 50, 57 and 60 wins his first 4 years. Both Hakeem, Tim and Shaq went to the finals in their second and third years respectively. I don't seem a lot of comparisons here. A lot of the bigs today are playing a euro type game, as opposed to what the many greats in the 80s and 90s played.
I don't think the argument is that these guys don't occupy the 5 position on the court, it's that they don't play the tradition Center position as it was played from the beginning of the NBA to the 2000's. Now the "traditional SF" is now a PF and a "traditional PF" is now a C, the "traditional C" does not exist. The centers of the past (with a few athletic exceptions) would be run off the court because they can't contain guards on the switch. Roy Hibbert is the most immediate example of this. In 2013, he was the head of the best defense in the NBA. He was an all star and considered one of the stars of a team that pushed the soon to be NBA champions to 7 games in the eastern conference finals. Now, in what should be the prime of his career, Hibbert is languishing on the bench of a mediocre team, taking 3 shots a night. The reason for this is because the PnR (assuming a good PG and big worth guarding) used to be defended by 3 players. Now, many teams have so many good 3 point shooters they make it impossible to bring the 3rd guy over and you must defend the PnR with 2 guys, forcing you to switch or go under the pick. The traditional center just can't switch consistently. Most of these good young centers would have been considered hybrid 3/4 in the 90's like Dirk and KG were.
Good point. You cant seem to rely on the current bigs as your main source of offense and expect to win anymore.
There are a few questions surrounding this. 1. What do we mean by "center"? Are we talking about the label? Are we talking about the playing style? Are we talking about the physical attributes? 2. If "centers" (whatever that is defined by the preceding question) have indeed been at the brink of extinction, why? Is it because of somehow the world just provide fewer great basketball players that fill that description? Or is it because the strategies employed by present day basketball render such players obsolete? 3. When we talk about centers, are we focusing mainly on offensive style? Or is defense more important in our thinking of why there are so few great centers in the last decade, or why a lot of great bigs prefer to label themselves PF than center?
All true centers do anymore is D and Dunk. Maybe someday the pendulum will swing back to trying to use the post to generate inside out scoring, but for the foreseeable future the days of big man working the post is dead.
By definition of their positions, centers have always been high percentage shooting positions. When you're going for the percentage shot first then 3's second ala inside-out Hakeem age... it's not that much different that now.
When they start playing the low post 8/9 times down the court, I'll pay attention. Nobody has a particularly high effective FG percentage down low.
