Kobe, LeBron, Wade: It’s the Age of the Guard-Forward

On June 28, 1989, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar announced his retirement.

Every team in the league paid tribute to the 42-year-old superstar, and rightly so. He was the NBA’s leading scorer of all-time, an iron man for the ages, and one of the game’s greatest centers.

With him retired the NBA big man, as the face of the NBA.

It was the end of a long, prolific era. Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and now Kareem were the aristocracy of the league’s history.

Abdul-Jabbar had already long been supplanted as the leading scorer and dynamic leader on his own Los Angeles Lakers team by the rising Magic Johnson. But the most influential player of the next decade wouldn’t be Magic at the point, or even another dominant big man.

This time it was Michael Jordan, making his dramatic mark from the shooting guard position en route to five MVPs and six NBA championships. He was the undisputed most valuable player of his team, the league, and the entire history of the NBA.

Jordan was unquestionably the face-forward of the league during his tenure at the top. There were still dominant centers in the league during his time—Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson—but none of them had Jordan’s high profile.

Since then, it’s been elite shooting guard and small forwards, in the mold of Jordan, that have been the stars—the face of the NBA.

In a league that had become rigid in its positional definitions, MJ was the superlative all-around player on both offense and defense. He taught a generation of basketball kids that centers made good role-players (neither Luc Longley nor Bill Cartwright, who started very capably in the middle for the Chicago Bulls alongside Jordan, would ever be confused for Wilt the Stilt), and that this all-around guard-forward player was the future of the game.

Players like Kobe Bryant. LeBron James. Dwyane Wade. Carmelo Anthony. Vince Carter. Tracy McGrady. The list goes on and on.

These players have a handful of things in common. The essence of these guard-forwards, however (called so because many of them bridge the gap between shooting guard and small forward—playing extra big for a 2, and extra quick for a 3), seems to be more a philosophy or a mindset than a set of skills, something that almost defies explanation by means other than naming the players who embody it.

It’s Kobe. It’s Melo.

They’ve all got ample size and strength, though the specifications vary. They make their living creating shots with athleticism.

It’s D-Wade, though he doesn’t have the height of some of these other guys. It’s T-Mac, when he’s healthy.

These players had some of their most formative years under the umbrella of MJ. They handle the ball, but don’t run the point; they score in the paint, but not solely because of their size.

It’s even LeBron.

They become almost position-less players. Kobe and LeBron are technically slotted into different positions (2 and 3, respectively) but either can play just about any position on the floor, on either side of the ball. The mindset and approach to the game, despite their differences, are frighteningly similar.

Half of these guys mentioned are classified as shooting guards, but shooting isn’t the half of it. While a more-traditional shooting guard like Ray Allen or Peja Stojakovic earns their paycheck by knocking down shots (especially if they’ve got deep range), a guard-forward of this ilk typically adds a slashing, driving element to that game.

As a result, they often end up with a handful of assists to accompany their scoring line. That’s because their job isn’t to wait on the perimeter and be on the receiving end of a nice dish.

Their job is to create.

But even more than spicing up the 2 guard spot, the emergence of the guard-forward has also added tremendous relevance to the small forward position.

The small forward, out of all five positions, has always been the NBA’s red-headed stepchild.

Since the 1999-2000 season, a small forward has received at least one MVP vote 24 times—but that’s out of 153 total vote recipients, and is well under the 1/5 of the total that might be expected.

Many players receive votes year after year, however, so those numbers deserve clarification. Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs, for example, received votes in all ten years; Kobe Bryant received votes nine times. Those 153 vote-getters across ten years, then, boil down to 57 different players.

Only ten of those were small forwards.

But LeBron James is leading the charge to change that. In six years with the Cleveland Cavaliers he’s placed 9th, 6th, 5th, 4th, 2nd, and finally 1st in the MVP voting. That’s right—he’s received MVP votes every year since entering the league, including as a rookie.

The only other SF’s in those ten years to finish in the top five of MVP voting were Peja Stojakovic (then with the Sacramento Kings) at #4 in 2004, and Tracy McGrady (with the Orlando Magic) at #4 in 2002 and 2003.

The historical era of the center, on the other hand, is well-documented. Of the 45 players inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame since 1990, ten have been true centers, with another eight defying exact classification as a forward-center—players like Moses Malone, Kevin McHale, and Elvin Hayes. Add them together, and that’s 18 of the 45 inductees.

Twice as many Hall of Famers as any other position during that time.

But while it’s easy to use Hall of Fame inductions to benchmark the greats of the past, it’s impossible to judge current players by the same standard. To best measure dominance for current players we’ll use MVP voting again, which can give us some idea—those players who show up in the voting year after year are building of a career possibly worthy of the Hall.

While there have been three MVP trophies awarded to centers since 2000 (one to Shaquille O’Neal, the other two to Tim Duncan—if you consider him a center, which I clearly do), there have only been ten different centers who have even received MVP votes in that span. That ties with the SF for last out of all five positions, and that’s only if you also include Rasheed Wallace as a center and not a power forward.

But don’t go diminishing the impact of a dominant center just yet. Eleven years have passed since the last Jordan/Bulls title run. Eight of those championships since—eight! out of eleven!—were won by teams with either Shaq or Duncan in the middle.

Three were by Shaq with the Lakers and one with the Miami Heat, and four by Duncan and his Spurs. The others were the 2004 Detroit Pistons, the 2008 Boston Celtics, and this past year’s 2009 Los Angeles Lakers.

Has that much really changed since the days of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain? Maybe not.

While the legend of Michael Jordan has taken the popular focus away from the center position, it’s still arguably the position from which a player can be the most dominant.

But times are changing, and evolution is inevitable. There’s a very possible chance that LeBron’s dominance will influence a young generation of players to gravitate toward that small forward position, much like Jordan’s impact on the 2 spot. Bigger, stronger players who would normally become power forwards may shy away from traditional post-up moves in favor of LeBron’s start-on-the-perimeter, create-shots-with-your-feet approach.

Gone will be guys like the Houston Rockets’ Chuck Atkins, who at 6’6″ has become the team’s de facto starting center.

And the evolution is accelerating as European influences change the way the game is played. The memory of the traditional point guard-power forward combo as we saw it with John Stockton and Karl Malone is fading everywhere but Utah (where it’s still in place with Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer/Paul Millsap). And even those Jazz have a Euro 7-footer who shoots threes, in Mehmet Okur.

It’s too early, though, to say that any real substantive shift in the league has occurred. The Age of the Guard-Forward is so far a superficial one. Elite 2′s and 3′s are more plentiful, and they tend to get the superstar treatment, but a dominant center can still take over games and clearly still wins championships.

The future of dominant centers, outside of Dwight Howard, is the league’s big question mark right now. We’ve probably seen Yao Ming peak already, so who else do we watch? Al Jefferson? Is Greg Oden going to live up to his hype?

Think about it, though, next time you see LeBron James play, or Kobe Bryant, or Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, Carmelo Anthony, Andre Iguodala, Caron Butler, Stephen Jackson, Rudy Gay, or Danny Granger.

These guys—not their teammate centers, with only a few exceptions—have become the face of the NBA.