The NBA’s center position has an uncertain but promising future

Wrote about centers. An excerpt:

It’s interesting to view this wildly erratic big-man market in contrast to the market for wings and point guards, which remained largely friendly — stars like Stephen Curry, Kyle Lowry, Gordon Hayward and Kevin Durant got paid, obviously, but most of the sub-elite players at those positions pulled down significant deals as well. Jeff Teague, Jrue Holiday, Patty Mills, George Hill, Andre Iguodala, Andre Roberson, Dion Waiters, Tony Snell, Danilo Gallinari, Joe Ingles, Otto Porter and James Johnson all got double-digit million dollars per year over three years or more.

Point guard has become the NBA’s most important position and there’s a scarcity issue on the wing, so it makes sense. Meanwhile, the league is one where big men increasingly don’t even play down the stretch of important games unless they’re elite on one side of the floor or the other — and sometimes not even then. We’ve seen Kevin Love and/or Tristan Thompson on the bench at the end of Finals games the last two years, for example, and they’re two of the Cavaliers’ four best players. One-way bigs now routinely get played off the court at important times, which is why it doesn’t make much sense to pay them big money.

Interestingly, this trend of sidelining bigs is cropping up just as the league is suddenly awash in promising young centers that fall somewhere along the spectrum of high-level contributors, (potential) future stars or current stars. Anthony Davis, Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns, Joel Embiid, Kristaps Porzingis, Nikola Jokic, Steven Adams, Jusuf Nurkic, Myles Turner, Clint Capela and Thon Maker are all 25 or younger. And those are just the guys who have flashed huge potential. You also have a group that has either been inconsistent or mostly just solid — think your Marquese Chrisses, your Richaun Holmeses and your Billy Hernangomezes. Of these players, only Davis, Gobert and Adams are even onto their first post-rookie scale contracts.

Read the full story at The Step Back.