The NBA draft is upon us and draftniks are burning up brain cells at an alarming rate in their eagerness to predict which future disappointments will go to which teams. That makes this a perfect time to offer some advice that no one will listen to but bears mentioning just the same. advertisement
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The first truism of the draft is that nearly every team feels it needs a center, which means that three or four of them will throw common sense to the wind and leap on anyone their scouts have to stand on a chair to measure. It’s a bad idea and has been so for just about forever. But the NBA obsession with centers is incurable, despite the fact that in the past 20 years there have been only two who have actually won anyone a title – Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neil. I suppose you could count David Robinson, but he needed Tim Duncan along side him to win. Yet centers keep going high and often, because too many teams draft on what they think they need rather than who is the best player available. And they always think they need a center. Such thinking got Sam Bowie drafted ahead of Michael Jordan and Joe Barry Carroll ahead of Kevin McHale and Michael Olowokandi ahead of Paul Pierce, a No. 10 pick, Vince Carter (5) and Dirk Nowitzki (9). The tendency to draft people you think you need but don’t really want isn’t limited to centers, it just seems that way. Think, for example, of Charlie Ward and Dwayne Washington as point guards who were picked on perceived need. Or Courtney Alexander. Or Keith Van Horn. Teams think they need a center or a point guard or a small forward, when what they really need are good players. Draft talent and fill the rest out with trades or free agents. As the Pistons showed, five good players who know how to play as a team can work. Thankfully, there is reason not to end the senseless preoccupation with centers that has been epidemic during the past five or six years, when Shaq ruled the paint, and for three years the Lakers owned the title. We saw in this year’s playoffs that the Age of Shaq is drawing to a close. It’s not easy lugging 350 or more pounds up and down the court, especially when the opposition is an active and athletic team determined to make you run until there’s nothing left in your legs or lungs. The Pistons did that to Shaq, and by the fourth quarter of games, the big guy had gotten decidedly smaller, his offense diminishing, his defense vanishing, and the rebounds going to guys with far more energy. So, if you’re looking three or four years down the road – or even two years – you can see that centers are no longer going to dominate, because there isn’t a truly all-time great around. Yao Ming is a nice man to have in the post, but he’s not overpowering and may never be. The rest of the crop is pretty ordinary, and the Pistons won with a power forward playing center and last year’s No. 2 draft pick, center Darko Milicic, buried so deep in the rotation he may as well have been sitting on the team bus instead of the bench. It should be a signal that it’s time to stop thinking that you need a center. Emeka Okafor is a very good player, and he’ll probably go first, bad back and all. But guys like Okafor who have shown they can play at the highest level in college should be the only centers you even think about with a high pick. After that, look not for need but for talent. Talent with some development would be nice. The mock drafts are littered with high school players and Europeans who are said to have great skills but are untested against real competition. This year’s Milicic is Pavel Podkolzine, a 7-3, 303-pound, 19-year-old center with a pituitary problem from Russia. There’s also Andris Biedrins, a 6-11, 18-year-old Latvian. At least one will go in the top seven or eight picks. Both will probably last no longer than 12 picks. Both are projects with more potential downside as Yinka Dare. And don’t forget Peja Samardziski, an 18-year-old Macedonian, or 19-year-old Puerto Rican Peter Ramos. The former goes 7-0, the latter 7-4. They’re both first rounders, the draftniks say. Neither is the next Shaq, or maybe not even the next Benoit Benjamin. You can pick almost any year and see centers going before their time and players who would be great falling down the draft list. Last year, there was Milicic. Not that it held the Pistons back this year, but, still, there were options available other than a very tall and very unproven Serbian. Teams would be advised to take them. Mike Celizic is a free-lance writer based in New York and a frequent contributor to NBCSports.com. |  | NBA Section Front |
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