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While talking with former Memphis Grizzlies players at Marc Gasol's uniform retirement ceremony this weekend, the topic inevitably came up about how much the NBA has changed in a dozen years. Ta. The Memphis team's hard-work, “grit-and-grind” style is hardly even an option in today's league…not just because of the 3-point outburst, but because of the demands the revolution placed on the league's biggest players. It's because of the defensive end.
While the objective of the game remains the same and the rules haven't changed as much as you might think, the tactics and strategies to get there have changed pretty wildly. Call it pace and space or 7 seconds or whatever. Spreading the floor and shooting 3s changed the way the team approached the game.
In particular, the position of the center has fundamentally changed. For example, consider the 2006-07 season. The 7-foot-6 Yao Ming then averaged 25 points per game and earned second-team All-NBA honors for the Houston Rockets, ranking sixth in defensive efficiency. The tactical hack to beat him in the playoffs that year was to have him defend Carlos Boozer's free-throw line jumper.
Yao wasn't alone. From then-Cleveland's 7-3 Zydrunas Ilgauskas to Boston's 280-pound one-handed shot-fake Al Jefferson to New York's hulking Eddie Curry (who played 2,849 minutes that year!), slowly, slowly. A giant who carried his feet was walking around the NBA world. Andrew Bynum, the 7-foot tall, 270-pound teenage sensation of the Los Angeles Lakers.
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Since then, the league has moved relentlessly toward the perimeter, requiring all five players to perform. guard The border is steadily eroding the status of the megacentre.Yes, there are still manyall There are players like 7-4 Victor Wembaneyama and 7-3 Kristaps Porzisis, but they play more like oversized guards than the man-blocking sleds of old.
For as long as powerful companies remained, they needed to change to stay ahead of the curve. Currently, it is a small group consisting mostly of people with elite skills. In Nikola Jokic we have a center who plays like a point guard (or warlock), in Joel Embiid we have a scoring machine with jump shots and foul draws, and in Brook Lopez we have a 3-point shooting and drop coverage genius. There is…and almost no one else. Jusuf Nurkic, Boban Marjanovic, Andre Drummond, and (depending on the day) Zion Williamson are among the players still in the league who look like they did in the 2007 game. He's the only player.
In their place came a succession of thin, tall centers like Wenby, The Ginger, and Chet Holmgren. Small, fast, bouncy centers like 6-9 Bam Adebayo, Atlanta's 6-10 Clint Capela and 6-8 Onyeka Okongwu. There are also former power forwards who have stepped up like Al Horford. Even traditional 7-footers like Deandre Aytons, Jarrett Allens, Cody Zellers and Ivica Zubacs mostly top out in the 240-250 pound range. This game will be even more difficult for the heavier players unless they come into the game with extraordinary skill and feel the way Jokic, Embiid and Lopez do.
This brings us to this year's NBA Draft and two big man sensations competing in the Men's NCAA Tournament Championship on Monday night. That duo, Purdue's Zach Eadie and Connecticut's Donovan Clingan, are two of the most dominant players in recent college history.
This can be seen in many ways, such as watching games, but an easy indication of their dominance is that they are 1st and 2nd in college basketball by miles, and Edy's The unknown is the fact that 39.7 is the top. NCAA and Clingan finished second with a score of 35.7. Those are the two highest points by an NCAA player since Williamson's 40.8 points at Duke in 2018-19…with the exception of Eady's 40.2 points in 2022-23.
Another distinguishing statistic of these two gentlemen is their enormous size. They're not just tall.They are big, has a sturdy skeleton and thick calves. Edie is 7-4 and 300 pounds. Clingan is 7-2, 280.
And that brings us to the heart of the matter. Because we've seen this film before where other Dinosaur big men like Connecticut's Adama Sanogo and Iowa State's Luka Garza were able to dominate college basketball while leaving little in the paint on defense. This is impossible at the NBA level, where the game forces you to cover the perimeter. (Slightly off-topic. International rules allow giants to stay in the paint. That's why Eadie is an underutilized weapon for Team Canada, and Clingan's Italian heritage has garnered attention overseas.) That's why I collect them.)
What Eadie and Clingan's tape shows is that if they're going to allow them to just hang out in the paint on defense, they might not have to show up. It's too easy for them.
Here's one clip of UConn's terrifying 30-0 run against Illinois in the Elite Eight. As long as Klingan is in the paint, he's basically playing nerf hoops against his little brother.
Incredibly, the Illini were 0-for-19 shooting against Clingan in that game. They were regularly trying to get him to the 3-point line, but they didn't have the personnel to do it.
In Saturday's Final Four, Alabama showed a more sincere effort as the Crimson Tide attacked the mobile Grant Nelson and won 6-10. Nelson scored 19 points and also had a “dunk'' against Clingan. This was more of a throw-in, but still impressive. But perhaps the play that resonates more at the NBA level is this one a minute later. He attacked Clingan off the dribble in space and used his wiggle and Eurostep to get to the rim cleanly.
Despite this, Clingan is the more agile and athletic of the two, showing greater ability to pop out to the perimeter, run the floor, and track smaller players off the dribble. That was especially evident in his spectacular performance in the eight-block tournament against Northwestern, where he remained unfazed by a change of guard. He needs to do the same thing against faster, more skilled NBA players with more space and (mostly) better schemes, but here's an example of his work against Illinois. Listed below. When Terrence Shannon started moving, Clingan put his foot on the 3-point line and stayed with Shannon's inside-out motion, sliding his foot to meet him at the rim before denying the shot.
Donovan Clingan had five blocks Saturday night.
This was not one of the five
what do we think? Did the statisticians miss this? pic.twitter.com/mzJMJ1fPZv
— Ryan Cassidy (@ryancassidycbb) April 2, 2024
Edy, on the other hand, is an even more extreme archetype, even bigger, even slower, and more reliant on a good system with drop coverage on defense and a post-friendly offense.
That said, the Yao resemblance here is even stronger. Like Yao, Eadie has a good release and is a very good short-range shooter, a combination that makes his post-ups automatic buckets at the college level. Perhaps he could also expand his defense. He's shot 70.6 percent from the free-throw line in his career and has clean mechanics, but he has the potential to go further beyond the arc. Additionally, as opponents became more brazen in doubling him, he became better at reading what was going on and getting the ball to the right spot.
So offense isn't something that keeps scouts up at night. Yes, he will need to make some adjustments to play more pick-and-rolls and less structural post-ups. Check out this amazing statistic. In just his 37 games in college, he has recorded more post-ups than any player in his NBA this year.
But his size alone makes him a clear lob threat, plus his coordination, strength, and skill make him an elite finisher.
Defensively? That's the whole fight. This is not necessarily a binary “yes” or “no.” There are levels to this.
Eady's statistical profile certainly contains some red flags, starting with the fact that he only had 11 steals all season, or about 0.5 steals per 100 possessions. While you wouldn't expect a 7-4 center to be a ball stealer, this percentage is still shockingly low, even for a category of centers that historically has had indicator value to the next level.
Eady also used his size to protect the rim in a much different way than Clingan, opting for an extremely low-risk strategy that prioritizes staying out of foul trouble. Eadie, like Clingan, has more blocks than fouls this season. The difference is that Clingan is almost twice as likely to do either on each possession. A look at the stats shows that his block rate is unusually low for his size (4.0 per 100), but if Eadie isn't an essential star at the next level, it's because he blocks that block. It also means that the rate can increase considerably.
In every game Eadie plays, opponents try to isolate him in space and use his superior speed against his size. (He'll also be vulnerable in transition.) But that doesn't make him any different than most centers on the floor in NBA games on any given day.
So back to the level of vulnerability. It's one thing that defensive mobility issues might prevent Eady from becoming a star at the next level, a player worthy of a top-five pick. But it's another thing entirely to say that this problem will be bad enough to affect him negatively. Unplayable, Especially considering his offensive power.
There are a number of big teams that operate somewhere between these two extremes, especially during the regular season when most teams play drop coverage on a fairly regular basis. Many of those big players end up being forced off the court at some point in the postseason. If Eadie and Clingan are no different than they are, that would limit the value proposition of acquiring them with high lottery picks…but that doesn't make them undraftable. There's a point in the draft where worrying about Eady being played off the court in a playoff series is laughable compared to the benefit of having a potential 20-point scorer in the frontcourt.
Of course, we can't make this too reductive either. In the case of both Clingan and Edy, this is not the case. just Its size and mobility influence professional aspirations. Clingan's medical report will be important, for example, considering he has been sidelined with multiple foot injuries. And in Eady's case, it's a bit of a red flag for him to enter the league at age 22 this fall, given that basically all of his recent best centers of his ilk are picked by the age of 20.
even deeper
Zach Eady vs. Donovan Clingan is a big man matchup worthy of college basketball.
But when you look at the big picture, the reason for your doubts goes back to the “Grit N Grind” discussion at the beginning.Edie and Klingan are both big. and talentedFrankly, it gives them a huge opportunity. But both players are about to face a fundamental change in circumstances, from a college basketball world that favors player archetypes to a far more hostile NBA environment. There is a strong wind at their backs right now, but they are about to ride the wind.
Conversely, how well they fit into the NBA at that size is a good gauge of how unfavorable the current NBA is for big, slow centers. Because if they can't cut it on this scale after decimating the NCAA the past two seasons, who else can?
(Top photo of Donovan Clingan and Zach Eady: Winslow Townson, Robert Deutsch/USA Today)
