We are currently in the Golden Age of the Point Guard. If you don’t have a All-Star point guard. You won’t progress in this league. But now, very slowly, we are starting to realize that big men are becoming more dominant, versatile and important to the success of teams.
And we don’t have to just look at the players in the NBA. Today’s pool of College and High School players are stacked with talented big men. Just looking at the ESPN100 list of the top 100 high school ballers. 40 are classed as a Power Forward or Center. That’s the future right there.
Now obviously they all might not make it to the pros but even if 10 of them do that would be a major boost to the Golden Age of big men that will come.
How about College? Well according to DraftExpress and their Mock Draft system. 8 of the top 15 that are eligible for the draft are big men. What does that tell you? Here’s what it tells me. That point guards have significantly raised the bar and now big men are doing the same.
In the NBA now there are, in my opinion. 10 big men that will start the Golden Age.
DeAndre Jordan
Anthony Davis
DeMarcus Cousins
Andre Drummond
Jonas Valanciunas
Nikola Vucevic
Nerlens Noel
Steven Adams
And lastly Mason Plumlee.
Honorable mention to Joel Embiid. If he starts like Nerlens has. Watch out for Philly.
All these players have shown promise. And what’s good with big men is the fact that they can have lengthy careers. How do you think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became the All-Time leading scorer? Playing for as long as he could.
Little tidbit. While watching NBA Tonight Brad Daugherty told a story about his first interaction with KAJ. It was after a game, Daugherty dived for a loose ball which for centers is like playing Russian Roulette. After the game, Kareem gave the Rookie Daugherty some advice “Don’t ever dive for a loose ball like that again.”
Why shouldn’t centers dive for balls? Because every time it happens, it could risk injury. When you hear the three words “Injured” and “big man” in the same sentence, you probably think about Sam Bowie, Yao Ming and Greg Oden. But those are isolated incidents.
Rebounds in this game are becoming an important statistic. Teams like the Miami Heat distorted the importance by going to 4 straight NBA Finals yet being terrible rebounders. If you look at the top 10 in RPG now, you see teams like Detroit, Sacramento, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Houston up there. Why are they up there? Because they have big men that crash the boards.
Remember the quote, defense wins championships? How do you think Boston was so dominant in the 60’s. Bill Russell. Enough said.
Big men are also becoming more versatile. They have added on from just posting up. There starting to space out, taking jumpshots. Dirk Nowitzki has mastered the art of spacing the floor. Mixing posting up with that patented, silky fade away, with taking three pointers. At this rate, he’s going to crack the top 5 on the All-Time scorers list.
Look at players like Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins that are already spacing out. Could you call that the ‘Dirk effect’?
Big men fundamentally produce a dimension that all championship teams need. There are some teams in this league that are threatening the fundamentals with the “Small Ball”. But with all this talent that will come the next 5 years. Small ball will be a blip in the overall history of the NBA. The ‘big man’ is coming back with all sorts. Athletic freaks like DeAndre Jordan and Nerlens Noel. All rounders like DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis. Classic bruisers and workhorses like Valanciunas, Drummond, Plumlee, Vucevic and Adams.
They’re coming. And they’re bigger and better than ever before.
Don’t forget, the top 2 prospect projected to go #1 and #2 in the 2015 NBA Draft by many experts are big men as well, Duke’s Jahlil Okafor and Kentucky’s Karl Towns.
