RealGM

With the popularity of big men playmaking with high post passing in the modern NBA, it got me wondering who would've thrived in that role from eras past?

Gasol, Webber, Walton, Wilt, Anthony Mason all seem like good candidates (not in that order, of course). What other obvious choices am I missing?

PS: I'm saying pre-2010 so I don't get a bunch of "Jokic is the GOAT this thread is stupid" responses. And I'm wondering if a non-Jordan/LeBron/KG/Kobe thread still gets traction on this board.

David West was always really good at this

I think Divac would fit pretty well in the role.

Russell, Unseld, Tom Boerwinkle, Jack Sikma, Horace Grant, to add a few more.

I'll nominate Sweetwater Clifton & Connie Hawkins.

Wes Unseld and Tom Boerwinkle are the ones I thought at first.

Walton, Russell, Garnett come to mind. I see their combination of pattern mapping, passing proactivity (contrasting reactive passing), and velocity all as the main contributors in such. I would have to watch some more of Tom Boerwinkle.

A good friend of mine who is very passionate about the subject of passing bigs gave me a list of names, just forwarding his intel

Chamberlain
Russell
Boerwinkle
Walton
Lacey
Garnett
Divac
D. West
P. Gasol
Sikma
Webber
Diaw
A. Sabonis

No one has mentioned Alvan Adams, he was a real good high post passer. A lot of the older guys, like Lacey, Boerwinkle, Wilt, got ball more mid post and back to basket. Adams got ball at FT line, not in low post, and was a great passer.

KG
Cowens
Ralph Sampson
Walton
Sabonis
Horace Grant
Vlade Divac
Chris Webber
Wilt
Bill Russell

rk2023 wrote:A good friend of mine who is very passionate about the subject of passing bigs gave me a list of names, just forwarding his intel

Chamberlain
Russell
Boerwinkle
Walton
Lacey
Garnett
Divac
D. West
P. Gasol
Sikma
Webber
Diaw
A. Sabonis

Adding to this good list..

M. Gasol
T. Duncan

Doctor MJ wrote:I'll nominate Sweetwater Clifton & Connie Hawkins.

Hawkins is an interesting inclusion, since I've never heard anyone else reference him as a passer. He's only spoken of as a great slasher (proto-Giannis or supersized Julius Erving).

I'll need to do a little more research on him later.

You can find some anecdotal evidence from teammates and GMs of the time about Hawkins being known as a good passer in Terry Pluto's "Loose Balls." Even after his knees had self destructed and he wasn't scoring much anymore in LA, his assist totals were still pretty high for a big man.

Goudelock wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote:I'll nominate Sweetwater Clifton & Connie Hawkins.

Hawkins is an interesting inclusion, since I've never heard anyone else reference him as a passer. He's only spoken of as a great slasher (proto-Giannis or supersized Julius Erving).

I'll need to do a little more research on him later.

He was said by some to be the best passer in the NBA the moment he joined the league - at a time where Oscar Robertson was still there.

We can break it down more precisely than better or worse though:

Hawkins excelled at what I call "big hand passing" which was something cultivated by the Harlem Globetrotters for decades specifically because of the way you could use it to make fools out of your opponents. Imagine being able to make all the actions for a pass except letting go with your hand, thus allowing you to choose at the last possible moment whether to make the pass or not based on whether the defender was trying to stop the pass or not. It was absolutely devastating.

I recall one description where Hawkins had the ball facing forward somewhere a bit above the high post - he looks to make a pass to the right and when one defender bites, he instantly flicks his wrist in the other direction to make a pass to the other side of the court, and when more defenders bit he just keeps it and dribbles casually down the open lane for a layup.

I would argue that this particular skillset is one of the few that's been truly lost from the pipeline, and it's how you could get someone even more devastating than Jokic at this. I'm not saying Hawkins or anyone else was better than Jokic - because I think Jokic has the best brain we've ever seen along these lines - but imagine what Jokic could do if he had hands like that.

Incidentally, I think this is something that gets completely missed when people draw the comparison to Erving. Erving never developed this set of skills, and I think there's good reason to think that a fully healthy, prime Hawkins was better than Erving ever was.

But with that said, when we're talking about Hawkins the high school phenom or the teenage ABL MVP, I don't think he had this yet. He began as a proto-Erving, but then the unusual road he traveled going back & forth between the schoolyard and the Globetrotters led him to develop a skillset that in total is probably distinct from anyone else in history.