Towns, Okafor, and the Great Modern Center Debate

Tomorrow night, NBA teams will have the chance to select a superstar or miss entirely and invest millions of dollars and years on a kid who doesn’t have “it”. With all the resources brought to bear, it still all hinges on the development and future performance of players who (in virtually every case) aren’t even fully mature yet, physically or mentally. This is the theater of the absurd, fighting over pecking order in a draft where a number of the best players have been picked outside of the lottery and a great prospect is an injury away from disappointment. It’s tough enough building a team even when you know the players well; with drafted college kids and international players it’s madness.

There’s a polarizing argument involving two big men who both have arguments to be taken first. Jahill Okafor looks like the most gifted low-post scorer in a long time and his FG% was absurdly high for someone who creates his own shots, but he rebounded like Bosh in college and blocked shots like Love. Defensively, he’s questionable, and he’s a terrible free throw shooter too. Towns, however, is a nimble defensive player with good shot-blocking numbers, but he also has a nice touch inside and outside — he’s one of the best FT shooting big men in years and has the potential to hit NBA three-pointers. The choice here has been advertised as one about new-school versus old-school, the low-post scorer versus the modern big man, but that’s misleading and the argument is deeper.

The Virtues of the Low-Post

The romance of the low-post game, especially for big men, is intriguing and a bit bizarre. For one, it wasn’t always enjoyable to watch and, say, Shaq backing down someone for a few seconds and bullying his way into free throws isn’t the best television. It’s also not the only way to score, and with the evolution of three-point shooting, the power of the pick-and-roll, and how scoring has migrated to the perimeter there’s really no need to dredge most of your points from the low-post. We just saw an NBA finals where a team won by downsizing and keeping five shooters on the floor. Another of the conference finalists, Atlanta, also embraced this concept. Today’s best offenses usually aren’t post heavy, and those teams rely on scoring from their perimeter players.

I have to admit here that while I was growing up my favorite player was Shaq. As he got old, I turned to different low-post scorers and watched them closely, defending or critiquing them and the supposed lost art. I tracked guys like Howard, Yao, and Bynum from their array of moves to how they set up in the offense and how well they passed out of the block. I understand the style well and I know its strengths. I’m not one to dismiss it entirely, but it’s not a magic elixir either.

Functionally, the utility of the low-post game beyond scoring, which can be found elsewhere, is to create double teams and put pressure on the defense, forcing them to make decisions and, hopefully, mistakes. But that’s not the only way to induce pressure — the pick-and-roll introduces a decision too and mismatches are common afterwards. You can set up at the horns or outside the arc and open a lane for a ballhandler, either by the threat of your jump shot or catching the ball and being able to make a play from there with room. Elite offenses today can operate at a high level without pounding the ball into a big man on the block as a primary option. Basketball is complex.

Most importantly, there were some defensive changes that have made low-post offense more difficult to operate. Here’s a breakdown of how revised illegal defense rules mean there’s a lot less freedom for low-post big men. The game changes, and rules accelerate those changes. Additionally, if put the ball in the hands of a scorer, it’s better for the team if that scorer is a great passer and ballhandler. Those complimentary skills create more options on offense and allows the team to optimize its shots. What people forget about Shaq is that he was a fantastic passer, and while Okafor has received plaudits for passing out of a double team passing, or racking up assists, isn’t truly a strength.

Looking at how a team’s offensive rating correlates with post-up usage, using numbers provided by Synergy and team offensive ratings from NBA.com, there is actually a slightly negative relationship between post-up frequency and offensive rating. Referring to the graph below, the results are pretty scattered but none of the elite offenses were post-heavy, and that includes guards and small forwards who post-up. In fact, some of those offenses weren’t even efficient on the post-ups they had. You can see similar results here from the 2013 data.

Unskilled teams with poorer offenses are the ones more likely to invest heavily in low-post offense. The problem here might be the fact that low-post scorers clog the lane and can take off precious seconds from the clock while backing up. You also have to set them up and turnovers are a lot more common when throwing in passing because defenses now are great at adjusting and attacking the ball. Plus, Towns doesn’t lack a post-up game — he has a few of Okafor’s skills and more. Towns has the highest assists per true-shot attempt; he’s creating arguably more for his teammates by the numbers. He also has a higher rate of free throw attempts per field goal attempt. There’s more to the game then scoring.

Old-School Doesn’t Mean Only Low-post Offense

There’s this myth that an old-school, throw-back center means one who exclusively scores in the low post and uses his size and strength to bully people there. This is actually not how the NBA has usually functioned, and Okafor is a rarity in that regard when he’s compared to centers in the past.

Defining the old-school era from Chamberlain to Shaq and using the all-NBA teams as an objective guide for which players were respected, I have a table below of some of the basic traits of these old-school centers. I think a pattern is immediately clear: there is a lot of variation, and there were many successful centers who weren’t exclusively low-post scorers. Wilt, in fact, is the best example: he started his career as a scorer, and then later found more legitimate success with his teams as a high-post facilitator and defensive center-piece.

Table: Traits of old-school centers voted onto all-NBA teams

*Estimated
+Significant part of game
~Partial

In the old-school era, there were a number of centers with guard-like skills and it was more common for a player to possess those skills than not. That list above doesn’t even include guys like Alvan Adams, a great passer; Nate Thurmond, a defensive juggernaut; Jack Sikma, who had a great jump shot and led the league in FT% one season; and then there’s the infamous Bill Laimbeer, who actually had three-point range and focused on defense and rebounding. A proper old-school center should focus on defense/rebounding and have some decent all-around skills including a low-post game, but he doesn’t need to be a leading scorer. That sounds more like Towns than Okafor.

Breaking the centers down into categories, you can see the general archetypes. (There are probably a couple other categories, like “defense-only anchors” with Mutombo/Ben Wallace and “rim owners” Gilmore/Tyson Chandler who use their size to protect the rim and finish well inside.) The best centers usually have some combination of strong all-around skills with an emphasis on defense and rebounding. Guys who become stars by bullying players inside without soft skills or defense are rare — it’s Moses Malone and a short list of others.

Elite scorers with strong all-around skills
Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson (Shaq)

High-post, team-first rebounding defensive anchors
Bill Russell, Wes Unseld, Dave Cowens, Bill Walton (Joakim Noah)

Scoring defenders
Willis Reed, Patrick Ewing (Alonzo Mourning, Dwight Howard)

Finesse scorers with limited defense/rebounding
Bob McAdoo, Brad Daugherty (Dan Issel, Brook Lopez)

Jack of all trades, master of none (all-around)
Robert Parish (Bob Lanier, Al Horford)

Paint beasts with no D
Moses Malone (Al Jefferson)

Think about what people mean by “old-school” and why they’re valuing heavy low-post scorers. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, and history has been forgotten and discarded by people who only remember Shaq, Olajuwon, and Kareem, instead of the long list of centers with a variety of skills who were also successful. History tells us that a star center is one with a wide-range in value like Towns, not a scorer with defensive question marks like Okafor.

The Cataclysm of the 3PT Center

Change is scary, and the NBA is still running full-speed into the three-point era. Now stretch fours are acceptable, common, and valuable pieces, and teams are eyeing centers who can launch from beyond the arc. Atlanta used Pero Antic, for better or worse, almost solely for his abilities as a floor spacer, while Meyers Leonard reinvented his career with outside shooting and others flirt with the coveted shot. Towns has potential to be a very good outside shooter. He’s already a decent midrange shooter, and workouts have suggested he has the range. Additionally, his FT% is a decent sign he has the touch.

Why should we care about three-point shooting for centers? The power of spacing should be evident, and it’s even more valuable for big men. People are still hesitant to accept the latter point,[1. Ed. And there are some tradeoffs, jumpshooting big men tend to be worse offensive rebounders. But there are always tradeoffs, and more efficient initial scoring is probably more valuable than offensive rebounding in most cases.] but with a three-point shooting center you can have a clear lane inside and you can draw away a rim protector from the basket. It also makes a pick and roll impossible to cover because you have a tall shooter who can step out behind the arc and the big man defender is often drawn outside too, creating an opening for the ballhandler.

Looking at the recently released 15-year RAPM file, the top offensive players are exclusively perimeter guys. You have to go down to the 9th place to find a big man, but it’s Dirk, who’s a jump shooter. Then the next big man is Shaq down at 29th and then Jamison, Karl Malone and Anthony Davis. After that it’s Aldridge and … Ryan Anderson, a three-point specialist, followed by Love.  Few big men are ranked high, and many of those are outside shooters. I’m using RAPM here because it’s one untethered to shot volume and points scored — it’s just showing which guys are correlated with their teams performing better. Post-up scorers have rarely looked good with these kinds of on/off or plus/minus numbers. Cheaper shooting specialists usually outrank them, unless we’re talking about versatile forces of nature like Shaq and Davis.

Table: offensive RAPM (2001 to 2015) of 3PT shooting big men

Table: offensive RAPM (2001 to 2015) of low-post scorers

Everyone’s impressed by Randolph’s double-doubles, Jefferson’s post-moves, and Lopez’s efficiency, but it doesn’t move the needle for their teams. However, low scorers like Bonner pack the same punch or better, and the pattern holds for other guys too. Andrew Bynum made an all-star team for his back-to-the-basket ability, but there’s no proof his team played better on offense with him; they were usually better off with Lamar Odom.

Turning to more RAPM data, this time provided by Layne Vashro, there were 121 seasons with an offensive RAPM of +5 or greater from 2007 to 2015. But only 14 of those seasons were from power forwards or centers. Referencing the players below, it’s a list comprised mainly of Dirk and other jump shooters with some exceptions. (McRoberts and Jamison both have three-point range for those who have forgotten.) Elton Brand wasn’t exclusively a low-post player, and he used his midrange shot heavily with the Clippers at his peak. Drummond has no range, but he doesn’t have much of a post game either; he’s no Okafor. He’s an athletic finisher, and some of those guys like DeAndre Jordan or Chandler look pretty good in RAPM because of their abilities in the pick and roll. And Shaq is, well, Shaq — he’s singular.

That equates to 11 out of the top 14 players on offense having three-point range, but the rate is much lower for everyone else. Depending on how you define position and three-point range, the rate is around 17% (using my own position data over the past decade.) Using Synergy data again, the top low-post big men by volume are in the first table below. Compare that with the second table: the three-point shooters are, again, outclassing them. Note that the top big men in the post-up table are the ones with guard-like skills with Aldridge’s jump-shooting and Griffin’s playmaking.

Table: top post up-big men 2015

Table: top 3PA-big men 2015

The problem with three-point shooting big men is that they’re usually bad on defense, the boards, and they can be guarded with a smaller guy. But that doesn’t apply to Towns, who’s actually better on defense and rebounding. He’s also enough of a threat and large enough that you can’t just defend him with a wing.

Break this down logically: even if you given Okafor the benefit of the doubt on offense, Towns should still be close to his value on offense given the power of shooting and his other skills, but the gap is much larger in Towns’ favor on defense. How do we justify taking Okafor first?

Conclusion

The best comparison for Okafor is, in my mind, a healthy Brook Lopez without the free-throw shooting. If he’s lucky, his FG% will translate into the NBA, which is no guarantee — there’s a huge difference between posting up young college guys and NBA pros. He won’t be able to do much else on the court, but his turnovers won’t be a disaster and his size will be a deterrent on its own on defense. (There’s a chance here Jahill becomes a great defensive player unexpectedly, like Bogut or even Cousins, but you bet on what’s actually happened on the court and what you know about the players — bet on reality. If we say Okafor is going to transform on defense, then we should allow Towns to have the same growth.)

Unfortunately, despite the efficiency, Brook Lopez is not an offensive center-piece. Remember last season the Nets were horrifically under-performing, and then Brook got injured. Lo and behold, they downsized with Pierce as a power forward and turned into a different team, making the playoffs and getting to the second round. Lopez peaked as a high usage, efficiency scorer, and that’s still not enough; you need other skills. Chances are, NBA defenses will know how to deal with Okafor more effectively, hacking him before he has a chance to finish at the rim or denying him the ball.

Also, this isn’t a black-and-white issue. Towns can post up too, and his usage wasn’t far from Okafor’s. There’s a real possibility Towns will be the better offensive player, especially if you value spacing, and once you factor in defense this should be an easy decision.

If you wanted to build the perfect NBA center in the lab to compete today, you would probably design what’s essentially a 3/D center with some size — those guys have sorta never existed before, besides maybe a motivated Rasheed Wallace or LaFrentz on a good day. That is the potential game-changing center that should inhabit dreams.

The discussion about Towns and Okafor isn’t one about the lost art of low-post scoring versus a modern NBA center; it’s one about the value of a guy with a multitude of skills versus another with one huge strength. The low-post game never really died, and having a playmaking big man is now valued — yet if we turn to history, we see the value of versatility and the importance of defense. Towns is the old-school pick here, and he’s the pick for a team hoping to build a championship contender.