One of the most intriguing aspects of the NBA playoffs to this point is not who is left, but who is not.
You should pay especially close attention to this if you are a Knick fan – specifically, if you count yourself among Knick fans who think they can become a playoff team next season with the roster as it is currently constructed.
Isiah Thomas has built the Knicks around center Eddy Curry, who is developing into one of the few traditional post-up forces in the league at the drastically depleted center position. Yes, Curry needs to make dramatic improvements in his post defense and rebounding, but not many teams have that kind of offensive force in the paint.
But my alarm bells started going off as I looked around the league and saw what happened to the few true centers who made the playoffs. Shaquille O’Neal, Yao Ming, and Dwight Howard all lost in the first round. If you want to consider the Lakers’ Andrew Bynum in that group, his team didn’t make it out of the first round, either.
The teams that have enjoyed the most postseason success have a glorified power forward playing center: the Spurs (Tim Duncan), Suns (Amare Stoudemire), Pistons (Chris Webber), and Jazz (Mehmet Okur).
The small-ball Warriors barely have any power forwards, never mind a center. The Nets start 7-footer Jason Collins at center, but he’s strictly a defensive presence. The Bulls are getting eviscerated by the Pistons with a 6-9 center, Ben Wallace, whose impact is mostly at the defensive end – and often from the weak side.
In fact, the only team still alive in the postseason with a traditional center who plays more than a cameo role is Cleveland. But Zydrunas Ilgauskas is more of a face-up offensive player, and the Cavs’ offense runs through LeBron James, not Ilgauskas.
So what does this all mean? Is it a trend, and if so, are the Knicks chasing the wrong trend?
Whatever you think of Curry’s development – frankly, I’d find it hard to lodge an objective complaint – it’s worth wondering whether the Knicks have placed all their eggs in a basket whose time has passed.
As I’ve presented this theory to people around the league whose opinions I value, I’ve gotten mixed responses. Essentially, it’s both. First, the league is trending toward smaller, more athletic frontcourts – i.e. Golden State and Phoenix – and teams that want to play the traditional post-up way have been forced to adjust to that style.
But the second point favors the investment that the Knicks have made in Curry. Basically, you can’t feature what you don’t have. And other than the Heat, Rockets, and Magic, no one has a traditional center like Curry who can do the things he can do on the low block.
“There haven’t been a lot of big men floating around, so coaches had to adjust and start playing power forwards as centers because there weren’t a lot of Eddys and there weren’t a lot of Shaqs,” Thomas said during the season when I asked him about this. “But when you have an Eddy or you have a Shaq, it totally changes the game. When you can force people to start having to play the bigs inside, then basketball will change again. It will go through another evolution. The Currys and the Howards, the Bynums, those guys coming up, they’ll change some things in this league.”
What caused the shift?
“When the NBA and college put in the three-point line, that changed everything,” Thomas said. “I think the first evolution was the Garnett class and those guys. I remember when I was in Toronto, I saw the big guys, the Garnetts and the Rasheeds and all that, they started moving their game to the perimeter because it was easier to get a three out on the perimeter than it was the old fashioned way. So you lost a lot of footwork inside and you lost a lot of low-post movement.
“The Kareem sky-hook went out the window, the McHale low-post play,” he said. “That used to be the only way you could get three points. But then, I think it’s starting to come back. I think the bigs are starting to get better inside. We don’t play Curry at the three-point line at all, although he’s capable of making shots from 15-18 feet. … Right now, his game is on the block and we’re doing it the old fashioned way. Thus far, it’s paid off for us and for him.”
Thomas and Knick fans can only hope he’s right.
Comments (1)
Uh, Mikki More?