The NBA has always been a land of giants, but in today’s NBA, the big man is becoming less and less relevant. Indeed, the centre as we once knew it is all but extinct.
Bill Russell. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Wilt Chamberlain. Hakeem Olajuwon. Shaquille O’Neal.
These are some of the greatest players in NBA history. Each of them was central to winning multiple championships and each was at one point considered the best basketballer in the world.
They were enormous men who left an enormous footprint on the game of basketball.
Today’s NBA, however, is a very different competition to the league Russell and Chamberlain dominated in the 1960s.
The Golden State Warriors have made the game smaller and more expansive, greatly limiting the impact of the biggest men on the court. As more teams follow the Warriors’ lead in an attempt to compete with them, the big man may well be bred out of the game.
It’s already happening. Not since Shaq retired has a player whose primary attribute was their size been the dominant player on a championship team.
Draymond Green is just six foot seven inches, yet he played the majority of last season at centre, as the Warriors revolutionised the league with their emphasis on small-ball and three-point shooting.
In last year’s NBA Finals, the players who had the most impact at centre were Kevin Durant and LeBron James.
Last year’s stacked NBA Draft was flooded by talented rookie point-guards as teams searched for the next Steph Curry or Russell Westbrook.
The increased pace and spacing of the game has drastically reduced the impact of big men in the NBA. In the current NBA, I would argue just one traditional centre would be in the top ten players in the league, and perhaps one more that might squeeze into the top 20.
The quality of All-NBA and All-Star centres has been significantly lower than eras gone by. DeAndre Jordan, Joakim Noah, Rudy Gobert and DeMarcus Cousins have all scored All-NBA spots in the past four years. None of them will ever be considered superstars.
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There is some hope for the traditional big man though. Two players have the potential to be all-time greats who dominate the game like the bigs of old: Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony-Towns.
Both men are exceptional talents with tremendous upside and the ability to dominate the floor no few else in the league. However, they will need to a number of things to join the pantheon and reach the status of all-time great.
At the least, they would likely need to win an NBA MVP award and lead a team to a championship as the central player.
Anthony Davis has been in the NBA since 2012. Since then, he has been selected All-NBA twice and was last year’s All-Star game MVP as he put up a record-breaking 52-point performance.
He regularly puts up great numbers in points, rebounds and blocks. In 2015, he was fifth in MVP voting, and averaged 30 points and ten rebounds in his first playoff series. In 2017 he was named at centre in the All-NBA First Team.
Davis is a two-way superstar and clearly has the talent on both offense and defence to be an all-timer. The thing standing in his way is New Orleans.
At just 24 years old, Davis has the ability time to be the most dominant player in the world. ‘The Brow’ is built to destroy, and once he matures further and gets a quality squad around him, he may well be unstoppable.
Karl Anthony-Towns is just 21 years old, but the former number one draft pick and Rookie of the Year has an enormous future ahead of him.
He just finished his second season in the NBA, and he only narrowly missed out on All-NBA selection. He is seven feet tall, but possesses remarkable athleticism for a man his size.
He has crazy potential as a defensive and offensive threat, and pairing him with Jimmy Butler next season could be the best thing for his career.
While the NBA will continue to be a small man’s playground for the foreseeable future, watch out for Davis and Anthony-Towns to show that big men still have a place in the league.
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