Go small or go home

2012 NBA Finals (and beyond) Preview

Get ready folks, here comes the 6'10" and under NBA Finals. Scour the rosters of both the Miami Heat and the OKC Thunder, and you can count on no hands how many seven footers will take the court in the 2012 NBA Finals. Besides jumping it up for the first possession of the game, the center position will be almost completely unrepresented in this championship series. 

Miami's bigs all fall into the power forward category. Chris Bosh, a terrific outside shooter and improved rebounder, lacks the muscle and footwork to dominate the paint on either end. Ditto for Udonis Haslem. Joel Anthony, a starter on last year's conference champ squad, plays center as best he can with limited size but has been marginalized on this year's edition of the Heat.

The Thunder try to play a more traditional style with Kendrick Perkins at the pivot, but by nearly any estimate (statistical or otherwise) clearly shows a dramatic drop in production this season. Much of the team's success has come with him on the bench, particularly against the mighty 20-straight-wins Spurs. Coach Scotty Brooks instead turned to Serge Ibaka to patrol the paint, and all he did was lead the league in blocked shots.

Using defensive minded, undersized bigs as centers is nothing new in the NBA. Phil Jackson sometimes used Dennis Rodman as the center, and he stood at 6'6" or so. Heck, the Greatest Center of All Time Bill Russell was only around 6'10". How about Ben Wallace? In this light, it isn't so crazy that Ibaka and Bosh will be the big man on court for their respective teams. 

The vast majority of teams employ two bigs, two wings, and one point guard (2+2+1). This is coaching cannon. The positions of center and power forward have long been more or less interchangeable, as have small forward and shooting guard. These distinctions don't really matter and depend more on individual match-ups than any ideology, but again and again you'll see teams built around the 2+2+1 motif. 

Both teams of these teams peak with a 1+3+1 alignment incorporating a third wing player. During the regular season, it makes little sense to employ superstars LeBron James and Kevin Durant inside defensively. They would simply take too much punishment from opposing bigs. In the playoffs however, each coach came to undertand the 1+3+1 lineup gave their team the best chance to win. In the case of Eric Spoelstra, the loss of Chris Bosh for several key games forced his hand. For Brooks, Perkins was so ineffective against the Spurs he had to shake things up. 

So given that the two Finalists in 2012 play the same lineup format, is this the only way to win in today's NBA? Unequivocally, the answer is "NO!" Little doubt remains that the 1+3+1 is optimal for these two specific teams with their specific rosters. But oh, by the way, they also happen to be the two most talented teams in the league. Let's play a thought experiment: imagine that you swap Dwyane Wade for Andrew Bynum and James Harden for Dwight Howard. What would be the chance that they would still be playing for the championship this year? Right, about 99.99999%

Guess what the story line will be this offseason, particularly surrounding the draft and free agency? "You don't need a center to win in the modern NBA!" This happens all the time. You remember Detroit making consecutive Finals appearances, and winning one. And you remember how all sorts of teams started building their teams around the "no superstar needed" ideology. Too bad that didn't work out for any other teams. 

So enjoy the smallball finals, it's bound to be incredibly exciting. The talent level is so freaking high there's no way it won't be. But don't hop on the bandwagon just yet, I suspect Hakeem and Jabar would do just fine in today's NBA.