Poll of the Day > the league is wide open for a player like shaq to just dominate

(+) Yeah! (+)

i like the current NBA but my god imagine if a 7'0+ player came into the league now and ran down to the paint, caught the ball and posted up

they would dominate!!! Why aren't more people doing this?

And why has nobody tried to master the sky hook like kareem did? it's virtually unstoppable

durrr I don't get it really. It's all well and good people like KAT and ad want to shoot threes all the time but my goodness we need another shaq
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Because you have to be talented, not just really tall. Shaq was a special talent, and he also was built like a tank. Seven-footers aren't really that big of a deal anymore; pretty much every team has one now, and a lot of them are pretty lanky. I think being a bruiser as a big man is more important than height if you want to dominate in the paint (unless your defender is an obvious height mismatch, but that doesn't happen too often).

DorkLink posted...

a lot of them are pretty lanky

yeah that's true

but surely it's more about building strength and developing technique? because shaq was so well put together, i didn't grow up watching shaq but how much of his dominance came from skill as opposed to just being a big strong guy?

i look at somebody like Dwight Howard, or karl anthony towns. ad does appear too lanky and wispy to ever be a dominant tank like shaq appears to be but surely with a bit more work on their frame they could look to dominate again?
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DorkLink posted...

unless your defender is an obvious height mismatch, but that doesn't happen too often).

Also I don't understand this nowadays, I see it far too often when a big man has a mismatch they let the smaller defender off instead of backing them all the way down into the post and shooting over the top

I don't see mismatches exploited as much as they should be. it's a shame
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Well, I meant that mismatch doesn't happen much when they're already in the paint. I imagine that if they started backing the defender into the post that would just give the other team's center time to switch and defend in the paint. Of course, that's if the other team is even playing a center, but I think that brings up another point about it - small ball lineups. It's not just that teams are shooting more threes, but they're doing it with smaller lineups so they can space the floor more and get wider open shots. Teams don't usually like to counter that with a big lineup, because it gives their offense poor spacing, and defensively the opposing team can exploit that as smaller players tend to be quicker and have better handles, which big men are poor at defending.

I didn't really watch that much Shaq in detail, so I don't know exactly what his game was like, but I think he dominated because at that time teams typically just stuck with traditional G-G-F-F-C lineups. Now teams are smart enough to know that if there's a dominant big man on the other team, they can just switch to a small lineup and it might force the opponent to counter because funneling everything through your center for two-pointers isn't an effective strategy when your opponent is shooting a bunch of threes on you.