How do you think Nate Thurmond would have fared against 2000 to 2002 Shaq

[DraymondGold]

Thurmond is usually considered a top 3 man defender among all time centers (along with Bill Russell and Hakeem). With good reason too: he decreases the volume of opposing all star centers more than anyone else in history, while also being top 5 in efficiency decrease (see 19:37 here:

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;t=1177s). There's no reason to think arguably the greatest big man man defender would do terribly against an opposing big man.

As for how well he'd do, of course Thurmond's exact effectiveness would change depending on the matchup (though again his average is so clearly so positive that there's no reason to think he would be a negative defender). How would the matchup work? There's at least a few things that are in Thurmond's favor:
-Strength: Thurmond was historically strong, which is key in the matchup against Shaq. Tim Duncan famously used his strength and wingspan in his defensive matchups against Shaq. With better training and sports medicine these days, Thurmond's strength would only improve.
-Size: when lacking sufficient strength alone, another key against Shaq is size. Yes, Thurmond was much lighter than Shaq, but as someone mentioned before, players were often listed only their draft weight throughout their career in the 60s. Further, players in general seemed to be lighter in the 60s vs the 2000s, because of the higher minutes and increased pace. With modern training and sports medicine and a focus on bulking up weight in the slower 2000s era, Thurmond could absolutely shrink the weight gap.

I also want to include a qualifier on size. Some of the better Shaq man defenders were ones who minimized the size advantage (Yao famously performed relatively well against Shaq). But there were also plenty of defenders who were lighter than Shaq who performed relatively well. Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Dennis Rodman were all lighter and had great defensive performances against Shaq at various times (often with the help of good team defense too).

Would Thurmond be the best defender against Shaq? Not sure I've looked at enough film or data on Thurmond to say. But to me, he'd definitely be in that group of better Shaq defenders if he was given time to adjust to the new era.