How is the NBA counteracting the dearth of viable big men
that are entering the league these days? Simple, teams have started to look
more for penetrating point guards like the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell
Westbrook in the draft to help generate points in the paint.
Just look at some of the teams in the league now and how
they operate. When the game is on the line, the Chicago Bulls give the ball to
Derrick Rose and ask him to blow past a defender to either get them a critical
basket or force the defense to send him to the foul line.
Cleveland Cavaliers’ rookie point guard Kyrie Irving had a
great year and pulled off a few impressive wins with his penetrating ability.
The San Antonio Spurs’ Tony Parker has been doing it for years but no year has
he been as effective as he was this season.
But there are many pundits who wonder why the Thunder would
let Westbrook do so much scoring or have the ball at the end of games when you
have such a dynamic scorer like Kevin Durant in the lineup.
Durant has been the league’s scoring champion for three
years running and can shoot from anywhere on the floor. People fail to realize though
that without a true post presence on the floor, a lot of those easy looks
Durant gets comes from ball movement and Westbrook’s penetration.
Especially since Durant is not very adept at handling the
ball. Durant has been questioned on numerous occasions by reporters who wonder
if he gets upset with Westbrook’s so-called “ball-hogging” but Durant has tried
to explain that it helps him when Westbrook takes a lot of shots.
Regardless of how outsiders feel about how the Thunder play,
what matters most is that the Thunder are winning with this formula. Westbrook and
Durant take most of the shots and the team as a whole plays stingy defense.
This formula is similar to the one coach Larry Brown used when he coached the
Philadelphia 76ers from 1997-2003.
Brown had the 76ers playing tough defense and allowed Allen
Iverson to hoist up all the shots he wanted. While Iverson wasn’t a very good
mid-range shooter he was nearly impossible to keep out of the paint with his
tremendous speed and quickness.
In fact, Iverson was so good at getting into the paint that
he averaged nine or more free throw attempts per game for nearly ten years
straight. It’s insane that he was able to take so much abuse considering he
only weighed about a buck sixty-five.
Regardless of how unorthodox this style of play seemed,
Brown had the 76ers playing in the NBA Finals in his fourth year coaching the
team. The 76ers did fall to the Los Angeles Lakers 4-1 in that Finals series
but Brown was able to coach that team to the playoffs every year except for his
first year coaching there.
So it seems that playing a little “big man” like Iverson was
a winning strategy even during a time when the league had better actual “big
men” still roaming the paint. But now that we are in an era where actual big
men are nearly extinct, you can expect to see more and more of this style of
play dominating the league. Especially if the Thunder make it to the Finals
this year.
Roosevelt Hall is an NFL Blogger for The Sport Mentalist and an NBA Blogger for The Sport Mentalist 2. He is also a Sports Reporter for Pro Sports Lives. He can be contacted at RHall_TPFB@Yahoo.com and be sure to follow him on Twitter @sportmentalist.
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