Beware of falling in love with one of the highly-touted big man prospects in the upcoming NBA draft. We’ve been warned as much in this recent Ricky O’Donnell article when he outlined what a modern NBA center looks like and how the prospects destined to be drafted in the lottery on Thursday fit this profile.
Positional versatility, 3-point shooting, rim protection, and the ability to defend guards and wings in space are essential gizmos in the toolboxes of modern big men. The days of the behemoth, low-post scorer are nearly over.
But the death of the traditional big man perhaps is equally as apparent on the defensive side of the ball where modern big men are expected to defend all sorts of players everywhere on the floor.