Traditional big men will always have a place in the NBA.
It's just that their place, and the things they must do to get there, is changing.
But because ample time is spent lauding the league's deceptively coined "small-ball" movement, the survival of these player types is often glossed over, their eventual extinction sometimes assumed. And that's something to which Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside takes offense:
Oversimplified? Yes. Inaccurate? Not entirely.
Conventional bigs, these champions of interior offense, are not doomed. Their playing style is alive, and there's evidence to suggest it won't ever disappear.
Dwindling, Not Dead
To be sure, the decline in popularity of post-ups is not imagined.
Grantland's Zach Lowe summed up this shifting landscape nicely:
There is no debate that post-ups make up a shrinking portion of the scoring pie, though there is some debate about why that is. Only eight teams this season finished even 10 percent of their possessions with a post-up, per Synergy Sports. A deca ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by Dan Favale
Why Traditional Big Men Are Still Vital in Today’s NBA
August 28th, 2015 by Dan Favale Leave a reply »
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