Draft will showcase future of modern center in today’s NBA
At the end of this year’s NBA playoffs, it would have been reasonable to wonder if the center position was on its way to extinction.
Golden State, which won its third title in four years, had no real need for one. Cleveland mostly kept Tristan Thompson anchored to the bench. In the Western Conference finals, Houston beat the Warriors in Games 4 and 5 by relying on smaller lineups in crunchtime without rim-running, shot-block- ing whiz Clint Capela. Likewise, Houston’s small ball often confounded Utah one round earlier in how to successfully employ 7-1 Defensive Player of the Year candidate Rudy Gobert.
As the NBA welcomes another group of rookies into the league on Thursday night, it’s clear the center position is changing.
Despite ample evidence suggesting the game has become dominated by perimeter players, talented big men led by 7-1 Deandre Ayton are projected to make up five of the top eight picks.
“Clearly watching the playoffs, things have trended away from the more aircraft carrier-style bigs, but the majority of these ones (in this year’s draft) fit really well in the modern NBA,”
ESPN draft analyst Mike Schmitz said. “You want a big who can switch, who can protect the rim, who can shoot threes and think.”
Time will tell whether the big men at the top of the 2018 draft can do all those things, but more than a few rebuilding franchises seem eager to give them a chance.
Just as important, players seem to understand the evolution of the game and how to market themselves, putting their mobility and potential to stretch the floor offensively at the forefront of what they want to show teams while embracing the idea of so-called positionless basketball.
In fact, Ayton and Marvin Bagley III effectively played power forward in college, largely because they were paired in the frontcourt with more traditional centers. Whereas players with that kind of versatility might have shied away from being called NBA centers in the past (or simply get overpowered if they lack the bulk to play down low), they now embrace their potential to creating mismatches at the next level.
“Teams talk about using me as a small-ball (center), being able to put me inside or out, just use me in different way where I can throw the defense off and be able to attack and create,” said Bagley, who averaged 21 points and 11 rebounds at Duke and showed ability to stretch to the 3-point line. “It’s just me being able to do both go inside and out. I think that confuses the defense. They don’t know what to stop.”
Not long ago teams envisioned building their franchise around a player such as 6-11, 265-pound Dwight Howard, who was traded Wednesday to his fourth team in four seasons. Even 7-2 Roy Hibbert, seemingly with no fit in the league anymore, was an All-Star as recently as 2014, leading Indiana to an Eastern Conference finals.
The big man isn’t disappearing, just evolving. The plodding center who doesn’t stray far from the rim is obsolete. Offensive and defensive versatility are what front office executives and coaches want — bigs who can defend multiple positions, especially smaller players on the perimeter, and can stretch the floor with their shooting.
Think Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid, Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford.
In a different generation, teams might have wanted someone such as Mo Bamba, with his 7-10 wingspan, to put on 40 pounds and work on his back-tothe-basket game. Instead, after his freshman year at Texas, he went to work with skill development guru Drew Hanlen to revamp his jump shot to go along with his elite shot-blocking ability.
“As far as production, my impact on the game, I feel as if there’s no one else on the draft that can impact the game how I do,” Bamba said. “I’m a long, agile, mobile type of player who can really change the geometry of the game.”
The NBA began moving away from the traditional big about five years ago. Howard was perhaps the last of the traditional dominant big man. Andre Drummond and DeMarcus Cousins still fit that mold, but Cousins has developed a 3-point shot and can facilitate offense with his passing.
As teams began to spread the floor more with 3-point shooters and use pick-and-roll sets with increased frequency, a versatile big man became a necessity.
Can a big man switch and defend a guard in one-on-one space? Can he get from a pick-and-roll situation at the top of the 3-point line back to the restricted area and protect the rim? Can he score in traditional low-post sets? Can he score from the perimeter, particularly from 3-point range?
That means teams such as Atlanta, which is picking No. 3, can’t just evaluate players’ skills. They have to be projected in the context of what kind of system works right now and where the game is headed.
“A few years ago, the league changed the rules and really put an emphasis on not allowing contact on the perimeter, but you’re still allowed to be very physical in the post,” Hawks GM Travis Schlenk said. “It really changed the way the game is played, and when you look at big guys in today’s game, they’ve got to be able to guard pick-and-rolls.”
The emphasis on switching has raised the stock of someone such as Jaren Jackson Jr., an 18-year-old who measured 6-111⁄ with a 7-51⁄ wingspan at
4 4 the combine and had moments at Michigan State when he was able to snuff out a possession by guarding a smaller player on the perimeter or help, recover and block shots. The potential to do that in the NBA will likely cause some team in the top five to overlook the fact he played just 21.8 minutes per game and was offensively inconsistent.
“The one thing that kind of stands out is that the bigs up top (in the draft) are not pigeonholed,” ESPN front office insider and former Nets assistant GM Bobby Marks said. “Some can play four (power forward) and five (center). They have the ability from a footwork standpoint, the athleticism to guard multiple positions based on how the game is going, who, come the fourth quarter, that you do not have to take off the court.”