The top three players in this draft are bigs, with one being a true rim-protecting five. At least two other traditional centers are on every lottery board, and if you made a consensus mock draft right now, you’d see a generous sprinkling of players shorter than 6-5 as well. With centers in particular, we run into issues of diminishing returns. You can play one center, but never more; meanwhile, you can play as many 6-7 guys as you want in today’s
NBA, provided at least one of them can dribble.
Despite that, teams continue to overvalue taking big centers at the top of the draft. We’ve had 18 centers drafted in the top six picks since 2002; only three of them have played in an All-Star Game, and in the case of Chris Kaman, we’re defining this term extremely broadly. Should Mobley and
Deandre Ayton eventually make it, we’ll be at five. Woohoo.
Mobley proves the exception to the rule — a 7-foot center who plays as a perimeter player, particularly on defense. Meanwhile the best offensive center in the league (
Nikola Jokić) was picked 46th, the best defensive center (
Rudy Gobert) was picked 27th, and this year’s other 7-foot All-Stars (
Jarrett Allen and
Joel Embiid) were picked 22nd and thirdrespectively.
On the flip side, we’ve had a perimeter All-Star selected in the top five of every draft since 2010, if we assume one of Cunningham or Barnes breaks through soon. And we’re on a stretch of 20 straight drafts in the top six. A couple of them stretch the definition of “All-Star” a bit (
Andrew Wiggins was voted in, and Devin Harris and
D’Angelo Russell each made it once), but most were legit.
Overall, we’re talking about 27 All-Star perimeter players from 19 drafts, and 23 of them were no-doubt-about-it, All-Star-caliber players. Despite the zest for size at the top of the draft, most of these stars weren’t that big; only
Kevin Durant,
LeBron James,
Ben Simmons and
Brandon Ingram were taller than 6-7.
