Back in the day, there were 11 teams in the ‘BAA’, not the NBA. Back in the day, Philadelphia were the Warriors and Chicago were the Stags.
Back in the day, the shortest was the point guard and the tallest was the centre.
Along with the game of basketball, the NBA has changed a lot, and it’s changing now more than ever.
The association is changing. There are now 30 teams, including one in Canada, and the league is truly global.
The game is changing also. Coaching is changing, tactics are changing, and as a result, the sport of basketball is changing.
An increasing trend of late is coaches challenging traditional positional conventions and going for all different sizes and shapes at different positions.
Yes, it has been nearly 20 years since the great Magic Johnson graced the hardwood at the one-guard with his unprecedented height, but of late, this change in the modern basketballer has become much more evident.
The hybrid “point-forward” position is a great example of this. Once a luxury is now a staple on nearly every team in the competition – just about every player labeled with “small forward” can and will bring the ball up for his team and initiate the offense for certain sets in the game.
Perhaps this can be partially attributed to the changing nature of the physicality of the game; a greater level of athleticism is required from the players in order to survive in a much less physical game than once before.
Back in the day, would Paul George have been the most athletic power forward in the game? The match-up nightmare that every team dreaded to face?
Back in the day, would Derrick Williams, role player struggling to fit into an NBA team, be the most dominant player in the league?
Perhaps the answer to both these questions are yes – but either way, the five common positions as we know them have been disappearing before our eyes.
Once known as some of the greatest players ever seen in the league – Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson, Charles Barkley – “tweeners” are now commonplace in the league – look down your favourite team’s line-up and I guarantee you’ll find a good amount of them.
How far off will it be before the five traditional court placings are replaced, and the two terms “backcourt” and “frontcourt” are used exclusively? After all, it has just started being used in the All-Star game.
How far off are we from no longer referring to the “centre” as the pivot, and rather labelling that to the “small forward” – the player who can play in both the backcourt and the front.
This giant game of what if could go on forever, and I encourage you to not keep any kind of wild thoughts of the science of the NBA athlete in your head – discuss below Roarers.
The NBA is ever-changing, and nothing about the league and the sport is ever likely or unlikely.
After all, perhaps back in the day, a young Philadelphia Warriors fan pondered the day when a massive, 6 foot 8, 115-kilo small forward who can jump over a car, playing for an imaginary team in Miami, was dominating the league.
However, there’d never be a team based in Miami – Floridians like outdoor sports due to their climate.
And what’s more, the world, let alone the sport of basketball, has never seen an athlete like that before.
Surely it would be an impossible circumstance.
Surely.
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