Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Shaquille O’neal, Hakeem Olajuwon: What these six former NBA players share aside from their intimidating stature and hall of fame status is that, unbeknownst to them (and a vast majority of NBA fans and analysts as well for that matter), they would be the last of their kind in the NBA for the foreseeable future. Each player’s exit from the league brought us one step closer to the end of an era in the NBA; an era that was not only dominated by big men, but an era that simply utilized traditional center play in the very least. Now for the reader without sufficient knowledge of the game of basketball and the NBA and its history, traditionally, one of the biggest needs for
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It’s not as though there aren’t any tall players in the NBA anymore, there are still plenty of them. The simple answer to this “mystery” is that the play style of teams has changed. With the introduction of advanced statistical measurements into sports, teams have decided to utilize these statistics to build their teams to fit an “ideal model” of what a team should be: a team where all five players are able to play at a faster paced tempo, spread the floor, and knock down the outside shot with efficiency. The best known example of a team like this is the Golden State Warriors, more specifically their ‘small ball’ lineup, as it has been coined. This lineup has been historically efficient for the Warriors, and was considered one of the key factors in the Warriors’ victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2015 NBA Finals. For the foreseeable future, it will be teams like this that will dominate the NBA …show more content…
However, there has been an emergence of an almost prototypical type basketball player recently. A player that possesses the height, strength, and skill set of the traditional big man, as well as the ability to defend multiple positions and step out and knock down outside shots as well. The perfect example of this type of player is one that just came into the league last year, won rookie of the year, and looks to be a future NBA legend: this player is Karl-Anthony Towns of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Towns is the nearly literal embodiment of this prototypical player, and looks to be the first of many players with this skill set that will most likely dominate the NBA for years to come.
While we saw the end of an era in the NBA with the retirements of the six aforementioned players, we may be currently witnessing the improved revival of this era with this new prototypical big
It’s not as though there aren’t any tall players in the NBA anymore, there are still plenty of them. The simple answer to this “mystery” is that the play style of teams has changed. With the introduction of advanced statistical measurements into sports, teams have decided to utilize these statistics to build their teams to fit an “ideal model” of what a team should be: a team where all five players are able to play at a faster paced tempo, spread the floor, and knock down the outside shot with efficiency. The best known example of a team like this is the Golden State Warriors, more specifically their ‘small ball’ lineup, as it has been coined. This lineup has been historically efficient for the Warriors, and was considered one of the key factors in the Warriors’ victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2015 NBA Finals. For the foreseeable future, it will be teams like this that will dominate the NBA …show more content…
However, there has been an emergence of an almost prototypical type basketball player recently. A player that possesses the height, strength, and skill set of the traditional big man, as well as the ability to defend multiple positions and step out and knock down outside shots as well. The perfect example of this type of player is one that just came into the league last year, won rookie of the year, and looks to be a future NBA legend: this player is Karl-Anthony Towns of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Towns is the nearly literal embodiment of this prototypical player, and looks to be the first of many players with this skill set that will most likely dominate the NBA for years to come.
While we saw the end of an era in the NBA with the retirements of the six aforementioned players, we may be currently witnessing the improved revival of this era with this new prototypical big