The Center of Attention

The number of quality big men in the NBA seems to be diminishing every season lately.  I know I recently posted about this issue with the power forward position, but with the league’s announcement that they will remove the center position from the All-Star game ballots in favor of an additional backcourt player I really want to go a little further on this topic, this time for centers.

It’s tough to point out exactly why centers aren’t as good as they used to be, but the fact is they’re just not.  In all honesty, it’s a bit of a relief that voting for the All-Star game will now be based off of 2 guards and 3 backcourt players.  The past couple of years have seen the likes of Josh Smith, Rudy Gay and Ryan Anderson miss out on the annual honor to players like Roy Hibbert and Marc Gasol.  Not that Marc Gasol was playing bad, he probably was among the top centers in the league, but other forwards were just playing better last year.  As for Hibbert, it’s pretty obvious that team success plays a large factor in all-star voting; though that’s not always a bad thing, I don’t think Hibbert earned his selection last year as much as he fell into it.

This drop in talent is disappointing though.  Let’s look at some previous all-star teams.  In both 1995 and ’96, the centers out East were Shaq, Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning while the West consisted of Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Dikembe Mutumbo.  These guys would absolutely dominate the NBA centers of today.  Even Dwight Howard, the current #1 center, would have a tough time playing against any one of them.

With those 6 being in the All-Star game, it meant that Vlade Divac, Rik Smits, Sam Perkins, Gheorghe Muresan and Arvydas Sabonis didn’t make the cut.  Were any of them superstars?  No, but in today’s NBA they probably could’ve made an all-star team during their better seasons.  Smits only had 1 all-star appearance, and the only other pick out of the 5 players above was Vlade Divac, who was selected for the 2001 game.  At the time, Divac was 33 and past his prime, but he was still good enough for a league that was getting weaker at the center position.  Shoot, even Oliver Miller would’ve stood a better chance than many of the big men today.

Now, not all of this change in the ballot is a result of the centers playing poorly.  There’s also an outstanding amount of talent at the small forward position today that needs some serious recognition.  That position boasts LeBron, Carmelo, Durant, Paul Pierce, Rudy Gay, Andre Iguodala and Luol Deng.  By comparison to the previously mentioned teams of the mid-‘90s, Detlef Schrempf would’ve had a tough time getting that all-star selection.

Hopefully though, the league will get back to having more than 1 great big man.  Take a look at all of the centers I mentioned before; when these teams met up, it was a big showdown in the post.  We got to see two giants, urged to prove to one another that they were the biggest, baddest guy out on the court.  I would love to watch that rather than seeing one particular Laker dominating everybody on a regular basis.  Dwight's size, strength and athleticism combined are a rare find in a player though, and maybe the guy's just too far ahead of the pack.