The Shoulders of Giants: A Look at the NBA Center

The NBA center. Along with a quarterback and the ace of your pitching staff, the center is what most teams live and die by. Even more, since the quarterback is on the field for half the game and a starting pitcher pitches once every five games.

The center, however, ideally plays night in and night out, clogging the lane, dominating the boards, tipping in errant shots and blocking opposing shots.

No other position causes franchises to gamble so frequently, the thought of a 7-footer who can play the game is what made Darko Milicic, Rafael Araujo, Fran Vasquez, Paul Davis, Kyrylo Fesenko, Alexis Ajinca, and Pavel Podkolzin first round picks.

And that’s just a list of busts since 2003. The thought of being a team to discover the next great big man (especially if that big man is foreign) has cost many a GM a job.

And yet they still do it, and will continue to gamble on center prospects, because nothing beats a franchise center.

Want proof? Everyone has piled on the Portland Trailblazers for the past 25 years for selecting Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan in the 1984 draft, but you know who else passed on Jordan? The Houston Rockets, who used the first pick to select Hakeem Olajuwon.

Now, how many people kill the Rockets for selecting Olajuwon? Nobody, even though Olajuwon only won 2 rings (in Jordan’s absence) to Jordan’s six. Because you don’t turn down a franchise center.

Olajuwon and Houston were the lucky ones. So was Orlando with Shaquille O’Neal and Dwight Howard.

But the fact is, in today’s smaller, faster NBA, centers are even more at a premium that ever before, because there just aren’t that many true centers out there.

Yao Ming, Dwight Howard, Kendrick Perkins, Brook Lopez, Shaq, Zyndrunas Ilgauskas, Jermaine O’Neal, Tyson Chandler, Brendan Haywood, Greg Oden, Al Jefferson, Andrew Bynum, Chris Kaman, Erick Dampier, Andrew Bogut and Marc Gasol are about the only true centers out there that get regular minutes.

That’s 16 players on 15 teams. That means there half of the NBA’s teams do not play a true center regularly. Players like Pau Gasol, Al Horford, Marcis Camby, Ben Wallace, Nene, Joakim Noah, Luis Scola, Andres Biedrins and Chris Bosh are playing center, even though they are better fitted to the power forward spot.

Now, this isn’t to say the players in the latter group aren’t doing a good job in the center position. I think Noah, Bosh, Gasol and Camby do very well anchoring their teams down low, even if it doesn’t use their skills in the most effective way.

But nothing compares with a true center, especially one over seven feet.

The job of a center is easily defined. They need to be that big body in the paint, both on offense and defense. On defense, that means blocking shots or at least delivering hard fouls to players who penetrate for a close shot.

On offense, it means having a few low-post moves, preferably a hook shot (very hard to defend). Dwight Howard, as gifted as he is, really hasn’t mastered any low-post moves besides dunking, and if he ever does, he will be close to unstoppable.

Most of their advantage comes with their size, which is why people draft these big stiffs who can barely move around, because you figure if they’re six inches taller than everybody, they have to be able to rebound and shoot close range shots.

But the best centers are coordinated, often to an amazing degree considering their size. Like Olajuwon. He learned how to play soccer as a youth, and when he hit his growth spurt somehow he kept those skills, and it made him nearly unstoppable in the NBA.

It’s an old adage that “you can’t teach size” and it’s always true with a center, where a big body can mask a lot of flaws in the game, even at the highest level.

Take a look at Shaq. At 7-1, 325, he already “learned” size. And he used that size to his advantage, becoming the most unstoppable force in the game for the better part of a decade.

But Shaq doesn’t exactly have the reputation of a gym rat. While people like Kobe are always in the gym or on the court, trying to become better, faster, stronger, Shaq always seemed more interested in becoming a movie star (although I’m not really sure how “Steel” or “Kazaam” was supposed to accomplish that), a rapper, a video game icon—in short, a mogul.

Imagine if he spent all that time working on more low-post moves, staying in tip top game shape. Look at some of those Laker games from the early 2000s. Shaq looked like a men playing with boys.

The above two paragraphs aren’t intended to take anything away from Shaq, after all, he’s got four rings. Some of those numbers he used to put up, particularly in the playoffs, are just mind-boggling.

But Shaq always seemed willing to coast through the season, then turning it on during the playoffs. Again, not that I can blame him, after all it’s a long season, but he seemed to have the on/off switch that someone like Michael Jordan, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant never did.

Of all the centers playing today, Yao Ming has the most complete game, which makes it such a shame that he can’t stay on the court.

Even more of a genetic freak than Shaq, Yao’s body (especially his feet) just aren’t meant to support that frame over a long season like that.

Whenever Yao is brought up in the conversation, everyone inevitably points to his health issues, and it’s a valid point. After all, you could be the most dominant center in the world, but it doesn’t do any good if you’re on the bench in a suit.

What really makes Yao a complete player is his game away from the basket. A lot of centers, once they’re ten feet out, they’re useless, merely bodies to set picks.

Yao is a legit threat outside of the basket. He can hit that 15-footer at a pretty good clip. I think Houston has always done well in keeping Yao in the right place, he only comes out that far to really throw a kink in opposing defenses.

Generally, when your center is coming out, it means you’re ceding a rebounding advantage, but it pays to show the other team that you are capable of hitting that shot.

Take someone like the Dallas Mavericks’ Erick Dampier. If he’s handling the ball anywhere past the foul line, no one even guards him, because they know he’s not going to shoot. It allows the team to double-team a scorer (in this case, usually Dirk Nowitzki) without consequence.

And Dampier is so slow, that if he decides to drive, it’s an easy shift for the defense.

But with Yao on the perimeter, not only do you have to keep a man on him, you often have to double team him to harass him into forcing something.

And if a defense is forced to double-team someone on the perimeter, it’s greatest advantage a team can have on offense. If you’re double-teaming someone down low, that leaves a perimeter player open, and as good as they might be from there, it’s still a fairly low probability shot. But with someone open in the it sets them up for a dunk, lay-up, or other high-probability looks.

Dwight Howard is touted as the future of the center position, which, in my opinion, doesn’t bode well for future youngsters. Like Shaq, Dwight Howard is a physical specimen, but Dwight just seems to be coasting by on that physique without adding any fundamentals to his game.

Dwight is a good defender, especially when it comes to blocking, but how many times have we seen Dwight block the ball into the third row of the crowd?

Sure, it gets people fired up, but a block is supposed to be a defensive play, with the idea of taking away possessions. When you give the ball right back, you simply give the other team the ball back for another chance to score.

On the offensive end, Dwight makes up for his lack of a low-post game with his ability to finish around the rim, but it can only take him so far.

He hasn’t mastered the move that Shaq did, where he gets the ball down low, backs his man up closer to the basket, and finishes right around him.

In the Eastern Conference Semifinals last year, Kendrick Perkins absolutely abused him down low, because Perkins used his bulk to body Howard around, and exposed Dwight as largely a finesse player.

Hey, finesse players are fun to watch. I think we can all agree that Howard, Dirk, Steve Nash, LeBron James are all more fun to watch than Shaq, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, but which group has the rings?

Fouls are the mortal enemy of the center, on both sides of the ball.

Foul shooting can make or break a center. Shaq is famous for his struggles at the foul line, and Dwight Howard isn’t much better.

Clearly it hasn’t hurt Shaq (although he has been lucky enough to win titles with outstanding shooting guards) in the rings department, but it is a pretty significant part of the game in crunch time.

If you have to take Shaq out of the game in the closing minutes, you’re giving away your most high-percentage shots up close and you’re also opening up the lane for the opposing team’s offense.

This is another area where Yao is a good weapon to have. His shooting touch follows him to the charity stripe—he’s a career 83% shooter. Dwight Howard certainly struggles, though he was able to hit some pretty big ones in the playoffs last year.

On the defensive end, fouls hurt the center even more, because a fouled out starting center might a well be a death sentence. Unless you happen to have a capable big man in reserve (Lakers with Gasol, Magic with Marcin Gortat, and, yeah, that’s about it), all of a sudden your gameplan is all sorts of off-balance.

It’s also why a team with two centers is such a valuable thing. The Magic have Gortat to fall back on when Howard gets into trouble, so they can be a little more fearless when it comes to defending and attacking.

Why else would the Magic have paid a backup center who gets 5-10 minutes a game $35 million over 5 years?

When the Dallas Mavericks made their run to the Finals in 2006, a huge reason was the center tandem of Dampier and DeSagana Diop. Neither of them are world beaters, but they were equally competent enough to make themselves interchangeable, and what this did was give the Mavericks 12 fouls to play with at the center position, a gigantic advantage over someone like the Spurs, who had to tread much more lightly than if Tim Duncan were to run into foul trouble.

Centers, by the nature of their position on the floor, are simply more susceptible to fouling. Every one is driving at them, they’re expected to get a lot of blocks, and their margin for error when it comes to defending is very thin.

Unlike guards, it’s very difficult for centers to draw charges, because no one believes that a 7-footer is getting taken out by a 6-2 PG that is 100 pounds lighter.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the center, because as more teams play the PF/C type of player, I think true centers will actually become more valuable in the long run.

Because there’s just no substitute for a big man on the floor.

This is the fifth and last in a series covering each position on the floor in depth. Also check out Chairmen of the Boards: A Look at the Power Forward Position, On a Wing and a Prayer: A Frank Look at the Small Forward Position, Guns a-Blazin’: The Modern Shooting Guard and Hardwood Generals: Examining Today’s Point Guard.