@globaljaybird
Could Rico Gathers become Draymond on steroids?
Probably Scottie won't seize the moment.
But Rico seems to me to be a guy that has the athleticism to be taught to put the ball on the deck more and to pass more.
Where I am headed with this is not so much about Gathers specifically, as about the potential future of the Point Center.
As NBA bigs get smaller, just as Draymond begins to be a jack of all trades, there becomes the possibility of every position becoming much more widely scoped.
Everyone said that Danny could have played point guard about as well as Magic; that he had an even better touch Magic.
Magic was essentially the proto type of the point center.
Danny could have been the next one.
I suspect if we go back we could find some more that had the athleticism and abilities to become a point center.
Wilt absolutely could have become a point center. He would never have bulked up to 300. He would have played at about 260. He proved one the course of his career he could learn to do almost anything except FTs. Bad FT shooting might have kept him from being the Point Center, but I suspect he would have found a way around it if that were the only way to be the greatest player in the alternative age of the point center.
The game then was not ripe for it. The 7 footer was too important inside, based on the way the game was called in those days.
Now?
Draymond may just be the beginning, not the outlier.
My father always said that Jud could have used Magic more as a point center than a tall point guard, but that Jud and most people weren't flexible enough thinkers to realize the potential of a point center. He swore the game would evolve to the point center one day. He said it would be a lot like Hartman's use of Walt Frazier at SIU. He said Danny could have changed the game and been that guy for Hartman, but that LB, as great of a coach as he was, was just not secure and stable enough career wise to do anything but try to win a ring with Danny the surest way possible.
Maybe the unintended consequence of the spread of trey balling as primary offense, will be come the point center my dad forecasted.
The idea of the point center is for the offense to start out revolving around a guy out front capable of doing what a point guard can do, but combined with what a center putting it on the deck could do. Its not just running an offense with a long point guard.
Centers are hubs.
McClendon's four corner offense, that Dean adapted from just a stall, into both a stall AND a scoring offense, makes the concept clear.
In the four corner, the point guard becomes a short center that can put it on the deck and keep it on the deck and stay the hub of action, where ever he moves on the floor.
Using point guards in this role was the only feasible way in Dean's time. But the best big defensive guard (think Don Chaney) could always conceptually at least stifle the best short point guard (think Phil Ford) in the four corners.
My father argued correctly that the best point center would always hold matchup advantage with the opponent's best defender, be he center, forward, or guard.
My father could not foresee big men getting shorter, so he was always envisioning the next Wilt Chamberlain that was coached from the cribbed to be such a point center.
But reality has a way of morphing around unexpectedly and delivering us to what we were anticipating, only by a different context enabling a slightly different kind of actor than expected.
The rules and dynamics shaping the game have changed to create a context where bigs are getting smaller.
The smaller the bigs get, the more feasible it is to find a point center that can do all the necessary things. Its just a numbers game on a normal distribution.
A capable point center is increasingly probable and that rising probability increases the feasibility of building such a team. What we may be seeing in Golden State is not so much the evolution of a three point shooting team, but the rise of the point forward in the NBA.
And that point forward may be a pointer toward the point center, once the NBA gets comfortable with the changes created by the point forward.
I keep telling everyone: Magister Ludi would have loved this game.
