Say Goodbye to the Big Man
I was set to write this piece a few days ago, but opted against it because I didn’t think it was worthwhile. Then yesterday I saw a clip of 5’9†Nate Robinson blocking a dunk attempt by 7’6†Yao Ming, and I realized that it was in fact long overdue.
NBA fans everywhere will hopefully join me in saying this, but it’s time that the league retired the plodding seven-footer concept—it’s fetish for the “big man†and teams focus on putting their five best players on the court. The idea that you need a dominant seven-footer to win a championship has been inaccurate for over a decade, if not longer.
Yes teams with dominant seven footers such as Olajuwon’s Rockets, Tim Duncan and David Robinsons’ Spurs and Shaquille O’Neal’s Lakers have won championships, but that’s because they were dominant big-men, not because their teams needed them to win. In other words Olajuwon, Duncan and O’Neal were undoubtedly the best players in the league during their title runs, and like Jordan’s Bulls’, their teams were built around them. Another way of saying this is that they were the most dominant big-men, because they overpowered other players such as Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutumbo and each other in order to win their respective titles. However, if you look at the league today, the majority of teams are spending an unbelievable amount of money preparing to play a game that has long ended. Of course, the best case-study is my home town NY Knicks who have almost seventy-million dollars in salary tied to Eddy Curry and Jerome James alone. Meanwhile, they could have easily taken their lumps last year and saved millions of dollars with a center/power-forward rotation of Jackie Butler, Channing Frye, and David Lee.
You’d think that after watching the Knicks overpay for Curry and James and the Cavaliers over-value the presence of Zydruna Igauskas, other teams would have learned their lessons. Nope, instead, the Denver Nuggets gave 60 million dollars to Nene, a player who not only has been able to earn a starting spot, but who sat out the previous year with an ACL tear. Of the thirty teams in the league, only fifteen have a player over 6-10 and over currently playing up to their contract, and whose presence one can unequivocally say does not take anything away from the team. 1. Tim Duncan 2. Dirk Nowitzki 3. Kevin Garnett 4. Pau Gasol 5. Yao Ming 6. Dwight Howard 7. David Lee 8. Jermaine O’Neal 9. Chris Bosh Honorable Mention 1. Rasheed Wallace 2. Mehmet Okur 3. Andrew Bynum 4. Marcus Camby 5. Nenad Kristic 6. Emeka Okafor That means half the teams in the league are paying players who are not only expendable, but who undermine their teams chances of winning games. Players like Bosh, Garnett, Gasol, Nowitzki and Wallace who are as comfortable playing on the perimeter as they are in the post defy the conventional logic about seven-footers.
Other athletes such as Elton Brand and Amare Stoudemire also show that small ball is a misnomer because if a team were to put either of these players at center, they might be shorter than seven feet, but they’re far from small. In fact, having more agile players currently occupying the power-forward position for many teams slide over to center would likely reinvigorate the gracefulness of post-play in the league, while also enabling more teams to play an up-tempo game a la the phoenix suns.
In all honesty, I do not care about winning and losing. Okay, that’s not true, I really care about winning and losing. But for the purposes of this argument, let’s suspend that concern for a moment. If as a consumer you want to get the best for your buck, then it behooves the company providing the product to ensure that they put out their best material. Which is why I will never understand why the NBA commissioner would waste his energy worrying about how the players dress, changing the basketball and fining owners and coaches for complaining about the officials, but year after year allow teams to put the subpar players on the floor? Yes, the NBA player’s association has rightly worked out guaranteed contracts for their members. Still, the league could figure out other ways to rid itself of dead weight, without hampering player’s ability to get their cash. For example, every year the league could have a supplemental lottery where teams can expose any players from their roster who don’t crack the top fifteen at their position. If this player is selected, then they’d go to the other team but not be counted toward either teams salary cap. If they’re not selected then their team could decide whether to buy them out, or continue holding on to them. Additional rewards such as draft picks could be thrown into the mix as well, but the league office needs to do something to save most of these general managers from themselves.
Next time you watch your local big man get posterized by a 6’3†guard, read the box-scores and see that your centers are trailing your guards in rebounds, then maybe you’ll realize like I have, it’s time for the league to say goodbye to the big man.
November 29th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Yo, I’ll never forget the chills I got when Kevin Johnson skyed on Olajuwan. You trying to deny me of that?!??
November 29th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
That KJ dunk on Olajuwon was sick, probably the illest of all-time. My brother and I were watching that game on NBC and we didn’t know what to do. NBC kept on replaying the dunk, we left the room and came back, but we couldn’t escape it.
November 29th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
Hell yes. That’s one the few moments in b-ball that is burned into my brain that does not involve Jordan. You see KJ raise up and you’re thinking “foul” or “charge” with the miss then………BLAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
I did the same ish he did - I was out of my seat yelling at the top of my lungs.
November 30th, 2006 at 11:00 am
For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about. Here’s a clip of the dunk from youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EGMSETJUks
It’s grainy, but I think that gives it that extra terrorist-like feel that the dunk deserved. Peep Olajuwon falling back afterwards.
December 1st, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Gawd damn! Still gives me the chills!!
Makes a brotha wanna lace up his And1’s and get back out on the court…
December 1st, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Don’t know about this. Shaq, as old and broken doen as he is, was the key to Miami’s championship and most def is the key to teh three rings in LA. The big man is still key in my eyes.
December 3rd, 2006 at 6:23 pm
I agree with Rexx. You can’t discount the big man too quickly. I know the game is changing, but you can’t deny that a strong presence in the middle is the key to success.
December 4th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Yeah but thats cause Shaq continues to define & succeed at the role of the “big man”. He’s one of the few that still actually does his job in the paint…he maintains his house. The big man is supposed to be your go-to guy. When you need that quick bucket, or you need that stop. There hasn’t been anything as unstoppable as “The Deisel” powering to the hole since Kareem’s sky hook.
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