In the last 5-7 years, something has been slowly brewing in the NBA that is changing the entire face of the game — the once-revered and feared Center is slowly fading into extinction. The retirements of Shaq and Yao, and the plateauing development of Dwight Howard and Andrew Bynum have been pivotal moments in this evolution, and the looming retirement of Tim Duncan will move it a step-function forward. If you don’t believe me, look no further than the existence of headlines like Is Joakim Noah the Best Center in the NBA? and the removal of the “Center” position from the All-Star ballot in favor of “front-court players”. Or consider that 2012-2013 was the first season in NBA history where no player averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds.

I had a bit of free time this weekend and actually combed through some structured free data on the NBA’s last 31 drafts (back to 1983), leading me to believe that fewer “Centers” are entering the NBA, and fewer great centers are playing in the NBA.

First, analyzing the breakdown of NBA draft picks by position over the last 30 years, it’s clear that fewer centers are entering the NBA. Although there’s some YoY noise, the signal says that Centers’ “share” of all draft picks (3-year moving average) was consistently in the 23-30% range from 1983-2003, but has been in the 11-17% range since.

Second, of the centers that continue to enter the League, fewer are great players. I summarized the center draft picks that eventually grew to be all-stars and superstars (trust my judgment, only a bball nut would take the time to do all this analysis):

When Tim Duncan retires, Dwight Howard will be the only superstar center left in the NBA, and he’s probably the most borderline of those “superstars.” Too bad about Greg Oden’s injury.

Why are fewer “centers” entering the NBA?

Logically, there are two broad reasons: (a) players are getting shorter, or (b) 6'10"+ players are re-classifying to forward positions…

… Well, players likely aren’t getting shorter. All we see is that players are getting heavier (avg weight increased from 206 to 218 since 1983). Admittedly, you’d prefer a breakdown by position, but I think it’s safe to say that the world isn’t getting shorter.

So that leaves us with tall players being increasingly classified as forwards. The data above supports it. For example, in the 1996-1998 period, 27% of draft picks were centers, 37% forwards, and 36% guards. Compare to the 2011-2013 period: 17%, 44%, 39%. Over 15 years, 10% of picks have shifted from center — likely to power forward, with an additional 3% forwards shifting to guard.

Why? Because it’s cooler. Because it’s more like Mike.

Who do kids emulate? They don’t emulate big players. They emulate smaller people who can dribble the ball through a damn Coke bottle. Those are the things that excite kids. — Jerry West

Everybody wants to be like Michael Jordan — Patrick Ewing

Shaq was cool, but he was so unfathomable. Who could play like Shaq? There’s no skill set to mimic. It was being huge. Duncan wasn’t cool at all. [He was] fundamental. Nothing he did was flashy.” — Chris Ballard, SI

I always wanted to be a point guard —Dwight Howard

You’re a 6'11", 250-pound high-school sophomore and the next 2 years are purely about skill development. Would you rather work on your ball handling and jumper to become the next KD, or your low-post footwork to be the next Tim Duncan?

Of the centers that remain, why are they not as good?

Sometimes, a giant’s a giant. I don’t care how hard you try, but if you’re genetically 7'2" 290lbs, you’re not going to play power forward because you won’t be able to guard a 6'8" 240 lber. So centers do still exist… but they suck. Take another look up at the timeline. There were 3+ superstar centers in the 80's, 4 in the 90's, and 1.5 in the 2000's. Centers suck more these days...

… Why do they suck more? Here’s the story I’m seeing:

The inside-out game is becoming increasingly de-emphasized at the AAU and D-1 levels. Watch the last 10 McDonald’s AA games and you’ll see that centers are much more inactive (and have quieter stats) than guards and forwards. AAU was never very organized, but as it’s increasingly become just a talent showcase for scholarships (and even NBA scout impressions), it’s the guards who bring the ball up who dictate where the ball goes, and it’s not to the center. College coaches then preach fast-paced offenses to high school recruits, and centers are often reduced to outlet passers and screen-setters. So centers do play in high school and college, but not in environments that nurture low-post play like in the good ol’ days, so their abilities are underutilized at the college level.

The art of the entry pass is becoming more and more of a lost art. While centers battle for position and seal, guards are slowly spending less time working on the mechanics of entry passes in practice. It’s actually a bit more nuanced than just throwing it in there — it requires the right angling, the right english, the right spacing along the perimeter, etc. This was painfully obvious at UCLA when Kevin Love was the starting center and Mike Roll was the only perimeter player on a super-talented team that knew how to throw an entry pass. So centers are getting fewer opportunities in the post.

NBA draft applicants are spending less time in College before making the leap. It’s extremely well-documented that players are spending less time in college before bolting for the NBA. The problem for centers is that they typically develop offensive skills later than guards do, for a few reasons.

1. Tall people are often tall because they keep growing. So while a point guard stops growing in 10th grade and starts developing skills “in his body”, the center keeps growing and is always re-learning how to play/move/jump/slide/defend non-awkwardly in his body.
2. There’s a dearth of good big-man teaching at the high-school level. High school coaches are typically amateurs and NOT former centers (i.e., most people in the world aren’t 6'8"+) — it’s relatively easier to teach guard/forward skills, and much harder to teach center skills.

So centers need 4 years of skill development in college much more than guards do, but what happens is they jump to the NBA as raw 19-year old projects, don’t develop quickly enough in their first few years, then their 3-year rookie contracts expire having accomplished nothing and they drop into the D-league or overseas, where they go into depression and enter a downward spiral. Shaq and Zo spent 3 and 4 years developing in college before immediately starring in the NBA. By contrast, consider in the infamous 2001 draft with Kwame Brown (#1), Tyson Chandler (#2), Eddy Curry (#4), and DeSagana Diop (#8). Imagine if the 4 of these physical specimens had gone to college for 3-4 years each. They would’ve battled each other and college-editions of Emeka Okafor, Al Jefferson, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudamire, Curtis Borchardt, Dan Gadzuric, Carlos Boozer, Chris Wilcox, instead of being expected to compete against Shaq, Zo and Duncan. The 2005 draft could’ve been very rich.