ESPN Centers piece

["Greg Odegaard" <gmodegaa@longvred.rmc.com>]

Interesting article on the corner most of the league is in over the lack of
real NBA centers.  You can look at it at doing anything possible to getting
a star, or recognizing that this team will struggle at the center, winning
a title at the other positions, like the Bulls.

Anyway,




Centers have disappeared from NBA radar 
By Ray Ratto 
San Francisco Examiner 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Patrick Ewing looked positively inert Thursday night, showing all the rust
and even a few barnacles from his three-month layoff. Even Spike Lee, who
values the New York Knicks as a greater monument to art than the Oscars,
was making faces as Ewing creaked through isolation moves he used to make
in his sleep.


And that was the upside of the centers' contributions in the NBA postseason
to date. At this rate, Erick Dampier of Golden State will ask for a playoff
share.

If you ignore the league-wide refusal to score (twice as many teams have
failed to reach 90 as have reached 100 in the first 44 games), the second
most annoying thing about these last desultory 10 days is the way the
postmen, or in some cases the poor schnooks asked to play center, have
failed to deliver. We always knew this was Michael Jordan's league, but we
didn't understand until just now how big the hole in this particular
doughnut actually is.

It isn't so much the way the big fellows are actually playing, and at least
Ewing's errors were of commission. In some cases, the playoff teams
actually had no true center -- Phoenix bowed out with Clifford Robinson,
New Jersey with first Chris Gatling and then Jayson Williams, Miami with
nobody in Game 5 of its loss to the Knicks.

In other cases, teams have been using centers without having any
expectation of what they might offer -- Seattle is way overmatched with Jim
McIlvaine and waves of small guys against Shaquille O'Neal, San Antonio has
gone away from the basket (Tim Duncan instead of David Robinson), and
Chicago hasn't yet broken out Luc Longley, for all the good that does.

Fundamentally, though, the absurdities that took these playoffs from the
utterly forgettable were center-dominated moments. Alonzo Mourning cemented
his postseason image for all time by again putting his own wounded
sensibilities ahead of his Miami Heat mates. O'Neal called Seattle coach
George Karl a woman, which may explain that tortured squint the Lakers' big
man wears at the free throw line. And Rik Smits and Vlade Divac put two
barbers on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

Wilt Chamberlain long ago codified the rules of engagement for big men in
basketball -- win, and the world wins with you; lose and you suck all by
your lonesome. Bill Russell put him in column (b) most of his career.

Of course centers get more credit and blame than is probably their due.
Then again, if it's that much of a problem for them, they could always lop
off 14 inches and bag groceries for a living. Life's a tradeoff for
everyone.

Still, you'd like to think that out of 16 centers that maybe four or five
would rise above the foolish, the silly or the gender-confused and give
these flabby playoff games some tone, pace or even some points.

And Lord knows they need something, soon. There is no more novelty in the
phrase, "fewest points in a playoff game since the introduction of the shot
clock." It is now code for must flee TV, especially in NBA backwaters like
ours. When a late-game jump shot hitting a rim sounds exactly like Hakeem
Olajuwon's knees in mid-flex, and the team in your town wasn't even good
enough to join a party this lame, you ought to be feeling mighty low.

A lot of folks have made a case for the NBA being due for a huge fall:
labor/management unrest, lousy deportment on and off the floor, no Mikey
within a year or two, three times as many bad teams as really good ones,
the burgeoning Extreme X Games but not many people have yet made the next
leap, to an unappealing postseason.

This is extremely hard to do, because the playoffs are normally the best
time of all. The really horrible teams (and we know who they are) have been
dismissed, and the players all understand the size of the stage before
them. They all step up, as the cliché goes, and the games are glorious
examples of the game at its best.

Except this year, because the games look the same in real time and slo-mo.
Because more time is wasted talking about what guy did what stupid thing to
hurt his team, his image or his hair stylist's reputation than about what
sensational finish made ignoring the kids and annoying the spouse worth all
the grief.

While they should not have to bear all the blame for this, the centers are
in a large part responsible. Not because they are bigger than life, but
because they are in most cases smaller than the games in which they play.

And the really frightening thing? Hair doesn't grow any faster on Rik Smits
now than on anyone else's head, and George Karl isn't going to get any
girlier.