This Year's Rookies Are Changing The Idea Of What A NBA Center Can Be

As professional basketball has pushed further into the "pace and space" era, the offensive role of the NBA big man is morphing into something unrecognizable. Centers as they once existed—big dudes who dominated by catching the ball on the low block and working one-on-one against their defender—are an endangered species. So are teams that consider that the best way to get a bucket.

It's easy to explain exactly why old-timey bigs don't show up much anymore—rule changes that allow teams to play zone defense, mostly—but your Shaquille O'Neals and your Charles Barkleys will paint the end of the old-fashioned big as a tragedy regardless. Tune in when the Houston Rockets play on TNT and you'll undoubtedly hear O'Neal yapping at halftime about how Dwight Howard needs to demand the ball in the post and do some barbecue chickening or whatever. It's grating and predictable, but that's never stopped O'Neal before.

Even Howard himself isn't immune to this line of thinking. "The way the (NBA) game is played (now), it's all outside-in, it's threes, it's super-fast," Howard told USA Today. "It's really like we're dinosaurs, and they're trying to extinct us. But the Ice Age will not come, and we will not be extinct."

His Pixar-fied science aside, Howard is not wrong on this front. Just because centers are not asked to do the things they did decades ago does not mean the center position is dead. It's just evolving. Rather than a steady diet of post-ups, bigs now subsist on things like pick-and-rolls, cuts, and rim runs. They set screens and roll to the rim. They catch and dunk; catch and kick to a shooter; catch and dump it off to a man near the basket; catch and dribble-drive; or simply draw the defense into the paint to free up snipers on the perimeter. More and more of them are beginning to step out to the perimeter themselves and either face up or let it fly.

That evolution has taken a quantum leap forward thanks to this year's crop of rookie big men. Since the 1954-55 season and the beginning of the NBA's shot clock era, there have been only 76 rookies listed with at least a partial center designation to play at least 800 minutes and record a Player Efficiency Rating above 15, which is the league average. Of those 76, six—Karl-Anthony Towns, Jahlil Okafor, Kristaps Porzingis, Willie Cauley-Stein, Myles Turner, and Nikola Jokic—are rookies right now. That's the most in any individual season, per Basketball-Reference.

Of the six, only Okafor qualifies as something resembling a "traditional" big man. He does by far the most operating out of the post; per the Synergy Sports data on NBA.com, he finished nearly one-third of his plays there, the sixth-highest rate in entire league. He's worked there over 10 percent more often than the next closest player out of the group, Turner, who is at 20.8 percent. Okafor also operates in isolation far more often than his peers—he ranks fifth in the NBA in percentage of plays in isolation at 19.0 percent. The next closest player in the group is Towns, at a mere 6.7 percent. Okafor, in this cohort and increasingly in the league itself, is the outlier.

The rest of the NBA's freshman big men are pushing the bounds of what we know NBA big men to be. Cauley-Stein is likely already the fastest big in the league. Do yourself a favor the next time you flip on a Kings game and just watch him out-run opposing centers down the floor for baskets. It's a delight.

The Kings are an abomination on defense, and have actually been slightly worse on that end with WCS on the floor, but his mobility, length, and size should make him a well-above average defender with time. Cauley-Stein is already able to cover a ton of ground, and he's deterring shots at the rim better than almost any big man in the league. Per Nylon Calculus tracking, opponents take three fewer shots at the rim per 36 minutes with Cauley-Stein on the floor than off, which is the sixth largest differential in the NBA. Once he gets a hang of the nuances—and/or winds up on a team that isn't a total disaster—WCS will be erasing possessions in very much the same manner he did at Kentucky.

Jokic has some of the best per-minute and advanced numbers in the league, not just among rookies, but among all players. He's the only player in the NBA this season averaging at least 17 points, 11 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.5 steals per 36 minutes. He's also 22nd in the league in PER, 20th in Win Shares Per 48 Minutes, 11th in Box-score Plus-Minus, and ninth in ESPN's Real Plus-Minus. In less abstracted terms, Jokic is shooting 51-36-81 from the field and playing with ferocity and efficiency on both ends—facilitating offense from the elbow, boarding like a madman, blocking shots, snagging steals, and generally looking incredibly scary (in more ways than one) whenever he's on the court.

Turner is not the fastest of the rookie bigs, nor the one with the flashiest numbers, the highest ceiling, or the biggest cult following. But he does have the distinction of being the only one of this crop contributing in a big way to a playoff team. His return from an early-season injury and subsequent insertion into the starting lineup helped solidify Indiana's postseason positioning. More than anything else, Turner has been solid on both sides of the floor. His range hasn't yet extended beyond the arc and he can be a step late on defense, but his instincts are sound and he's knocked down nearly 42 percent of his looks between 16 feet and the three-point line. Indiana has even gone to him on big possessions late in games.

Porzingis has slowed down after his dynamite start—some of that is due to fatigue and some of it is due to Kurt Rambis—but before this recent dip, he showed signs of becoming a legitimately revolutionary player: a true stretch 5 with both the length and mobility to anchor a defense on his own. Porzingis' 33 percent conversion rate from beyond the arc belies his true sniper's skill set, at least for now—European players tend to see their outside shooting get a bump after their first season in the league, and he should be no different. Some of that evolution depends upon the Knicks allowing him to let if fly rather than forcing him into the post, but if he can survive the Knicks experience, Porzingis could also leverage that shooting skill into drives as well. He has done so on occasion, even if he's struggled to finish off the bounce near the basket. And then, of course, there are the tip-dunks.

Porzingis is also 15th in the NBA in Points Saved Per 36 Minutes with his rim protection, per Nylon Calculus, and one of six players in the league with five-plus blocks in five different games this year. The Knicks haven't used him at center quite as often since switching to Rambis in February, but that should be his position going forward. Any rational organization embraces the revolution that's coming and lets him become what he's meant to be. The Knicks have not traditionally been that type of organization, but Porzingis might be too undeniable for even them to mess up.

If Porzingis may be a sign of a revolution, Towns is already a revelation. He's firmly among the very best bigs in the league, and by next year he should push to be a top-10 overall player. He's been on the floor for every single one of Minnesota's 73 games so far, averaging 18.2 points, 10.3 rebounds, 1.8 assists, and 1.7 blocks in fewer than 32 minutes a night. Towns is one of the game's highest-volume and most-efficient scorers already, but the rest of his game is also extremely advanced—he's a terrific rebounder and a dynamite passer for a big man, already able to thread looks through tight spaces from the post or off the dribble. Towns is also a well above-average defender clearly capable of anchoring a top-flight defense eventually. All in all, he's remarkably smooth for a player his size and age, in all aspects of his game.

He's also only 20 years old. Towns is the future, but he's also already right here. If this is where the center position is going, there is nothing at all to mourn.