Today’s best centers aren’t your fathers.
Even more classically productive scorers like DeMarcus Cousins, Dwight Howard, and Nikola Vucevic would stick out in the 1980s and ’90s. No big man of yore had the off-dribble wiggle of the Sacramento Kings superstar, was used as a pick-and-roll focal point like the Houston Rockets behemoth, or could shoot from the perimeter as effortlessly as the Orlando Magic seven-footer.
Al Jefferson – and to a lesser extent, Brook Lopez – is a relic for a reason: Bigs who function as nothing more than a low-block scoring hub have little to no place in the modern NBA, a reality reflected in NBA 2K16’s ranking of the league’s top-10 centers.
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Basketball players aren’t shoe-horned into specific positions anymore, just like a player’s nominal position no longer dictates his role on the court. Marc Gasol does nearly as much playmaking for the Memphis Grizzlies as Mike Conley. Al Horford is better utilized a spot-up jump-shooter or face-up penetrator than a back-to-basket pivot. Even more offensively one-dimensional centers like DeAndre Jordan and Andre Drummond shoulder more responsibilities than those of the past on the other side of the ball.
Does that make modern 5s worse than their more notable predecessors? The majority seems to think so, but that’s not necessarily the case. There’s still an important place in basketball for centers versatile enough to avoid being schemed off the floor, and there always will be; that prerequisite – along with more sweeping stylistic advancements of the game – just means today’s centers won’t “produce” in the more traditional manner that yesterday’s did.
As you’re sure to find playing with guys like Gasol, Cousins, and Horford when NBA 2K16 drops on September 29, though, that doesn’t mean they’re any less valuable.
