As humans, we tend to eulogize the extinct with reverence. The Dodo Bird. The Rocky Mountain Locust. The Golden Toad. And why wouldn’t we? It was us who eradicated these precious, sentient creatures. Some theorists would argue it had to do with their inability to adapt. But what if things are adapting at a dangerous, unnatural pace?
Such is the state of the current NBA. We play in a day and age that has rendered the long-held adage of “live by the three, die by the three” totally and completely false. And with this space-and-pace evolution, the lumbering, seven-foot center has gone the way of the Brontosaurus.
Recently, the center position has morphed into something different but familiar. There’s still no surrogate for Bryant “Big Country” Reeves, but there are modern, evolved variants of the center position in place. Most modern bigs can be divided into five categories, each a foretelling of where the position is headed while possessing the DNA of what it once was.
