As a prelude to some very affordable playoffs (20 of the 30 NBA teams will be able to fight them) and the prize that this means for teams without aspirations or real ring options … What legitimate reasons are there today for not going to death for the play-ins and choosing to let go? What arguments are there to choose tanking and disappoint the fans?
We focus on the main one. In which it will be, as they would say in APM, the best of the best. The current top favorite for the number 1 of the 2022 Draft is Chet Holmgren, a 2.13 player who occupies the center position and will play this year as freshman For the Gonzaga Bulldogs, one of the most mythical Universities and in the form of the NCAA (since they have finished being runners-up) but whose Conference, the West Coast, is not, curiously, one of the highest level in Division I.
Gonzaga’s legacy
Among the most valuable that the Jesuit factory has contributed to the NBA throughout its history, we distinguish John Stockton as the jewel in the crown, Austin Daye, Kelly Olynyk or Domantas Sabonis as notable successes, Zach Collins, Brandon Clarke and Rui Hachimura as diamonds in the rough and Robert Sacre and Adam Morrison as their most cartoonish anecdotes.
But Chet Holmgren has within his power to sign a milestone that no one at his university has achieved before and only Adam Morrison touched it with the tips of his fingers: hearing his name right after the sentence with greater hype anual de Adam Silver «With the first pick in the ’20xx’ NBA Draft… select…»
His presentation to the world: ‘sitting’ with Curry
Her first big flirtation with fame came in 2019 in the form of a viral highlight. Sharing a basketball court with Stephen Curry is usually enough for the cameras to catch you, but if on top of that, with your more than 2.10, you double crossover ‘patented brand’ to the double MVP, followed by a two-handed mate… boom. Habemus Vine.
It did not take long for the spiky Minnesota to show that his was not a flower of a single play, but without a doubt – that is how capricious web marketing is and that is how vague, at times, the eye of scouts – this action of enormous self-confidence in the SC30 camp of Steph, and the fact that it was made by someone of her size and scale, immediately and enormously fired the interest. From a couple of scholarship offers in junior colleges and a brief mention on a future promising portal, to becoming one of the most coveted pieces in the NCAA arena.
Like Anthony Davis as the most paradigmatic and well-known case, Chet hit ‘the stretch’ late, which has been confirmed as a true blessing. In his first years of high school, he was not yet five feet tall, which prevented the coaches from introducing him prematurely into training work. big manAs he focused on developing his dribble and his emphasis on the outside shot. Along with the centimeters, the minutes also increased, and then he also began to stand out as a stopper, exhibiting great timing when stopping the rival’s internships. A total player was beginning to be born. So much so, that he went from near anonymity to the star five of Team USA under 19. And there, for the second time…. boom. Gold medal and World Cup MVP.
Pívot: a name and many meanings
From one year to the next, however, things can still change. And a lot. Even in the very Green RoomWhere the fish appears to be sold in advance, there is scope for the plot twist.
From Magic phoning ‘Zo’ behind the scenes to guarantee you will be a laker (click here to see ‘the other side’ of the coin), we can move on to the odd one bennettazo epic last minute lurch, giving us Nerlens Noel as the sixth pick with the best plastic smile ever del Draft.
Mobley case
That’s why wins like the Cavaliers’ the other day against the Hawks had to make someone like Chet Holmgren especially happy. And not because of Ricky’s role, which is what we are already here for. Evan Mobley and his 17 points, 11 rebounds and 4 blocks in 35 minutes starting as a starter, are a warning to sailors of a new model of center as has not been seen before so markedly in the NBA.
Mobley, also a 2.13, is so mobile, versatile and sees his agility and speed so little penalized by his height, that corseting him to mere center will be an error. In fact, in Ohio it has not taken two games to close the first ominous calculation: that Mobley could not play alongside Jarret Allen because they were going to get in the way (sorry, Jacobo). But it happens that while Allen is a classic center for use (intimidating and powerful finisher), the impact of Mobley extends its roots throughout the field, there being no coordinate from which he cannot hit the enemy.
The evident lack of muscle, first obviousness and first prejudice, no longer calibrates the same as fifteen, twenty or twenty-five years ago, when ‘pivotcentrism’ was a mainstream in the NBA, and thus it was reflected first on the blackboards and then in the parquet, with post-up as one of the star actions to seek the basket, and having been discovered in the last decade as one of the most inefficient, courtesy of Daryl Morey and his Moreyball.
- That is why paint gamers like Towns and Embiid turn a large part of their game on the line of three.
- That is why Jahlil Okafor, a dollless dancer, has been forced to negotiate with the Partizan.
- That is why they are written articles like this one from The Ringer.
- That is why the Jokic, Vucevic, Davis or Cousins have advanced in this past decade to the Steven Adams, Whiteside, Howard or Valanciunas towards the All-Star. Because in addition to being solid inside, they also pose a threat to the entire outer perimeter.
In the NBA to come, the ductile beats the robust; resistance to mismatch is imposed by brute force in the area; appositionality is the tango that marks the new beat, and the absence of labels becomes the best cover letter in a league increasingly obsessed with discovering those all-around players that enable the head coach to unprecedented creative freedom in quintet design. Centimeters matter only if the transversality of whoever measures them feeds the width of the parquet. The muscle adds if its range of action is not limited to the area of the methacrylate.
‘The pioneers’
The Pau Gasol of Memphis or the Dirk Nowitzki of his first decade, even Manute Bol before them, led the way to this new spectrum. “It’s a ‘4’ that moves like a ‘2’. He is long and too skilled for him to score a ‘4’ or a ‘5’ and too big for a ‘3’ to defend him, so we will have to do a lot of things to stop him »; This is how Doc Rivers spoke of the German genius in one of his first playoff crosses as a Boston Celtics manager. That young, agile, powerful, fast and almost unstoppable Dirk whom the successes of his more mature stage seem to have buried in oblivion.
It’s 2021, and as Kevin Durant stands as owner and lord of the Nets and Bol Bol wonders why Mike Malone keeps reducing his gallops in coast to coast to the Summer League, the rest of big men They continue to focus on developing their long distance shooting and imagination at the high post rather than growing their deltoid radius.
Even Dwight Howard, still without offensive relevance beyond the bottle, was realizing that in this new era he ran the risk of becoming the dinosaur if he did not change his physical tone and renounce that anabolic-looking back, ideal for his years from Orlando, for a much finer upper body that would give it extra speed in marking and resolution tasks.
The search for balance
At the time that Brook López was digivolving successfully -the post-up for him spot-up– Howard joined Gatopardismo and redesigned a ‘new me’ that definitively dethroned him as a franchise player but allowed him to continue being useful as a rotation piece. Change so that as little as possible changes. Clark Kent without villains in a digital age.
The rhythm has accelerated and the number of possessions per game has not stopped growing, in part because now the pendulum does not stop as it did before when the pivot received his back, and everyone went into a trance while he patiently bounced warning Juan Palomo as the finishing touch to the play.
Now, the ‘5’ stands out as a finisher that runs the track in transition, which keeps breaking it in the pick&roll and that he solves the dribble from the front and with two movements, no more, technical and feint to impose himself on his pair. Not by push, but by class. Like Mobley two days ago, whose defenders nearly doubled his weight on the scale.
Chet Holmgren has everything we’ve described, and he has everything to be the right player at the right time. His year at Gonzaga should be enough to convince the lords of Tankathon.com, the only ones for now that they snatch the number 1 of the Draft in favor of Paolo Bancherom of the eternal Duke (another interior project of unicorn, although not so accentuated), that he, and what his image represents, is the future in the frontcourt of the NBA.
Kevin Durant as the impossible entelechy; Kristaps Porzingis as the ground from which to take off.
What if Pau…?
And I close with a thoughtful and unanswered question, now that his retirement is still fresh: what would have happened to Pau Gasol if he had grown up in this rising era? If from high school they had developed him as a player ‘from the outside in’. If in what he began to experience in his Chicago cycle, he had strengthened it since the days of the ACB.
If then the current debate of ‘Pau out of 75’ it would not have taken place because the Catalan would have conquered his own inner galaxy in its entirety, giving us an even more absolute and lethal version of himself … a beautiful madness that dies in imposture.
(Cover photo by Hannah Foslien / Getty Images)