The next generation of NBA bigs

It feels like every conversation we have about basketball these days traces back to small ball as the blueprint. The Golden State Warriors made sure of that when they tore through the league last season with their Death Lineup, a look with four wings between 6-6 and 6-8 that could shoot, pass and defend all flanking the league’s most dangerous scorer. Draymond Green paved the way for perimeter-sized players toggling up to center by being able to guard against comers of any shape or size, and played the fulcrum for the Warriors on both ends. We should stop comparing every thick wing to Draymond, but it makes sense that teams try to shoehorn those players into that role.

The Oklahoma City Thunder, who narrowly failed to beat the Warriors in the playoffs, and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who did manage it, both had to do it playing Warriors-style ball. And then the Warriors replaced their weakest link, Harrison Barnes, with Kevin Durant — a seven-footer at small forward and, unsurprisingly, an outstanding small-ball center when he was saddled with that role against Draymond (duh). So, good luck beating them now. The Warriors didn’t just set the tone for how basketball would be played in the next era, they made it their home court.

It was hard enough to picture a team beating them last season, when they won 73 games in the regular season; if there were any doubts about taking the Warriors over the field then, there sure aren’t any now. The Cavs are the only team left to hold a candle to them, and even for them, it’ll be a long shot to beat the Durant-boosted Warriors at their own game. There may not be a single team in the league that can do that.

But the game will always continue to change, to look forward for the next big thing. In the thick of the Warriors’ dominance, there were three big things of unique variety establishing their own narrative from the top of last season’s phenomenal rookie class: Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis and the much less heralded yet no less promising Nikola Jokic. In a single year, three players with a rare combination of size, speed and skill entered the fray. Of the Warriors’ nine regular season losses, one came to the fledgling Timberwolves, and this sequence feels especially foreboding:

Of course, Towns was the most polished of the three, putting forth a legitimate case for the All-NBA Team as a rookie. That didn’t diminish the wonder of watching Porzingis catch-and-shoot threes on one play and chase put-back dunks on the next, or Jokic dishing behind-the-back passes after pushing the ball in transition. They all bent the mind in a very similar way — they were giants who could exercise their size advantage inside as rim protectors, post factors and rebounders, and yet they also fulfilled the wing’s shoot-defend-pass checklist. (Get you a big man who can do both.)

Some highly skilled big men, like Chris Bosh or Al Horford, have been tugged towards this more versatile direction in recent seasons, but that’s very different from guys coming into the league with this kind of game early on. Towns, Porzingis and Jokic proved that Anthony Davis, who made his debut three seasons earlier, was no unicorn. Heck, DeMarcus Cousins, one of the few big and burly bruisers left, started shooting threes and taking folks off the bounce from the perimeter next to Kosta Koufos and Willie Cauley-Stein. Before last season, somebody joked to me about a Small Forward Boogie Watch; nobody knows why the Kings’ roster is all centers, but Cousins has the pure stuff to get by.

And isn’t that the whole hype to “7-foot Kevin Durant-Chris Paul combo” Thon Maker? The former high school phenom / basketball mixtape GOAT was an expected late-first rounder in this year’s draft, but of all the players projected in that range, it sure was no surprise that he was the one to be scooped in the lottery by the Bucks. You can see some of that size and versatility in fellow top-10 picks Dragan Bender and to a lesser degree Marquese Chriss, both plucked by the Suns. Next year, maybe it’ll be German center Isaiah Hartenstein, who SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell likened to Porzingis and Bender, that follows them up on this particular big man hype train. More and more now, this kind of big feels like a real product of the way the position is being developed before the NBA. We’d likely be talking about an 18-year-old Kevin Garnett in a similar way had he been raised in this era.

There exists a line of thinking that it’s no longer a two-big league, but with someone like Towns, his team can stick him next to any old center and play four-out ball. Taking that a step further, imagine pairing Towns with Jokic, and having a legitimate frontcourt of bigs with guard skills. As that type of player becomes more prevalent, it’s highly possible. Small ball was the emphasis of skill, but what happens when size catches up in that department? Instead of “small center”, a player like Durant could end up playing “seven-foot point guard” — Giannis Antetokounmpo already has. The league will get bigger again.

Maybe beating the Warriors isn’t about playing five wings, but about playing three wings and two bigs that play just like them. Field a size advantage at all positions, and yet lose none of the skill required to tango in modern basketball. Nobody can do that quite yet, but if you want to put it to a thought exercise, why not try The Ringer’s superteam game?

It’s a better question in the abstract for now. As currently constituted, the Towns-Porzingis-Jokic big man crop cannot bust the Warriors. Their consolidation of talent is too strong, while the new generation of bigs is still few in number, early in development, and most importantly, glued to teams still far from contention. For now, it may be a team like the Utah Jazz who can do the dang thing and trot out four- or five-wing lineups to meet the Warriors that are the dark horses to watch.

But for the Timberwolves, the Knicks, the Nuggets, the Pelicans, any team that finds themselves with one of these rare big men on their hands, they have the opportunity to build something different and wholly new, counter to today’s team to beat. Whether or not anyone topples the Warriors over the next few years, we can thank them for illuminating the path ahead.