Timmy...

[eyejayem]

Everyone hates the Spurs but you have to respect them. I think they have to be in top 10 teams of all time but I have an off topic question.

Tim Duncan was scouted as the best center prospect out of college. But Spurs had David Robinson and thought that they could use Duncan's versatility to play PF with the idea when David left he would move over. The 1st year after DRob's retirement Tim played C but wasnt as effective or dominate leading to a string of different centers since.

Now there is another forum and no one denies Tim is top PF of all-time. But if he played center I dont even think he gets in top 5. Typically your 7 foot 260lbs players are centers but if we graded Tim as a center is he anywhere near the player he is as a PF?

[J~Rush]

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

[Bobbcats]

lol nice response.

Also *dominant*

[Hard2dhole]

As a center he's well above average but i would not say he's a dominant center.

[conleyorbust]

As a center he's well above average but i would not say he's a dominant center.

Well assuming he's a center right now (not a tough assumption to make), who is a better two way center? Yao MIGHT be a better scorer, but its probably a wash because so much of what Tim does scoring the ball is meant to set up his teamates. Howard is certainly a more dominant scorer (fg%, less versatile though) and rebounder but he is nowhere near as good of an offensive facilitator. Duncan is superior to both on defense.

Its not a stretch to say that if Duncan had been considered a center since Robinson retired, he'd have been the best center in the league over that period. Hell, Robinson was more of a face up scorer anyway, Duncan was as much of a center during the years when the Admiral was there. You could say that he was the second best center in the league for that period too.

If he's a center for his career the only guys that are definitely more dominant are Wilt and Kareem with strong arguments to be made for Shaq and the Dream. I think Duncan's defense definitely puts him ahead of Moses.

He would be either the 3rd best center of all time or the 5th best depending on how you value his defense and the fact that he was on very balanced teams offensively.

[DwayneSchintzus]

1. he ain't 7'0". he was listed as 7'0" early in his career because marketing people wanted him and David to be "Twin Towers". He's 6'10" or 6'11". look at that picture from the ASG this year of him, yao, and dirk - dirk is noticeably taller.

2. he's never been listed as a center. the year after David retired they got Rasho (a real 7 footer) and put him at center. he's played over 800 regular season games, and 138 playoff games, and he's been listed as a power forward in every one. i don't understand why people insist on changing his position. he's the position that he's been listed at for EVERY GAME OF HIS CAREER.

[tsherkin]

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Beautiful.

1. he ain't 7'0". he was listed as 7'0" early in his career because marketing people wanted him and David to be "Twin Towers". He's 6'10" or 6'11". look at that picture from the ASG this year of him, yao, and dirk - dirk is noticeably taller.

He's been listed at 6'11 for a year and a half now.

2. he's never been listed as a center. the year after David retired they got Rasho (a real 7 footer) and put him at center.

Rasho played 28.7, 25.5 and 18.9 mpg as a Spur and did not noticeably change the style with which Duncan plays offense. It is also worth noting that Rasho has fairly good range on his jumper, and can and does often involve himself in the pick-and-pop out on the perimeter (at least on the wing/at the elbow).

So arguing that Rasho is a good reason for not calling Duncan a center is nothing short of preposterous.

he's played over 800 regular season games, and 138 playoff games, and he's been listed as a power forward in every one. i don't understand why people insist on changing his position. he's the position that he's been listed at for EVERY GAME OF HIS CAREER.

Uh huh, and Hakeem Olajuwon was listed at 7-0 until the last couple years of his career when the NBA finally owned up at listed him at his actual height of 6'10; labels do not impose upon the item they label any truth of form, but only perception.

Tim Duncan spends the VAST majority of his time under the foul line and posting guys up, often with his back to the basket. He takes about 2 shots a game from beyond 15 feet and is otherwise found mixing it up in and around the paint. He is a classic interior defensive anchor, moving around the paint to cover blown defensive coverages and to offer weakside defensive help in the form of a shot-blocking presence. He is an excellent post defender.

He is a center by style of play and often by division of minutes played (for example, he has spent 62% of his team's minutes at the 5 this year and only 5% at the 4, rather radically undermining the integrity of your argument.

[DwayneSchintzus]

He is a center by style of play and often by division of minutes played (for example, he has spent 62% of his team's minutes at the 5 this year and only 5% at the 4, rather radically undermining the integrity of your argument.

it doesn't radically undermine anything.

who determines how many minutes he spent at the 5? maybe he was playing the point and tony parker was the center.

he's the position he's listed at. when has he EVER been listed as a center?

[tsherkin]

-= original quote snipped =-



it doesn't radically undermine anything.

who determines how many minutes he spent at the 5? maybe he was playing the point and tony parker was the center.

That might be the dumbest thing I've ever seen written on these boards.

he's the position he's listed at. when has he EVER been listed as a center?

He's never been officially listed as a center by NBA.com but that's meaningless, because the people who run that site are careless, prone to error and misrepresentation.

The fact that his own COACH has talked about him as a center and that his style of play, body type and team role all fall in line with the general description of a center seems to outweigh something as pedestrian as the label on a website.

Your argument is hollow and lacks significant supporting evidence.

All you can say is that he's labeled as a center, you've got no substantive rebuttal to real points discussing the nature of the game.

Duncan is the size of and plays like a center and even his coach acknowledges this and has, once or twice, joked about the MVP voting and that Duncan prefers to be labeled as a PF for some reason (implying that he'd otherwise be labeled a 5).

Duncan was listed as a 5 at Wake Forest and is listed as a Forward-Center on more than one sports webpage (such as Sportsnet and basketball-reference.com) and is listed outright as a center on ESPN.

So your claims of his label are even undermined by the fact that you're limiting yourself to sources that support your point.

And one wonders how things might change now that an NBA All-Star panel has labeled Duncan as a center.

There are some links to some good blogs that discuss this:

Here is one of them, discussing a Mavs game that saw Duncan on the floor with four swings and guards.

It also discusses that the reason Duncan is mostly called a forward is that he was drafted by the Spurs, one of a select fews teams on which his label would have been changed after having been drafted out of college as a center.

He's pretty well the only guy on the Spurs who backs his defender down in the post or whom actually bothers to post up at all, backdown or face-up, or pro stance and his shot distribution is very clearly focused close to the rim.

To whit, of the x shots he's taken this season, 810 have been inside 15 feet (553 right around the rim, 118 from the left block, 99 from the right block), 109 have been between 15 and 22 feet and he's 0/2 from downtown.

So you'll notice: 921 FGA, 109 of them from outside of 15 feet (and those mostly from the wings/elbows where he runs the high sidescreen with Parker).

You'll also notice that he's taken 217 shots from the low post on either side of the rim and 553 shots from right within about 5-8 feet of the rim.

Notice then that nearly 84% of his shots come from the regions on the floor most traditionally associated with centers and that he takes an average of 1.85 shots per game away from these zones.

So less than 2 shots a game outside of a traditional center's spots on the floor. He is a prolific passer from the low post and his go-to set involves a backdown towards the rim and then maybe a turn-and-fire bank shot or a drop-step or spin into the lane. Maybe a short face-up, so he can use his pump fake to drag in a defender and get by him to the rim.

This is center offense and on defense, if it's not obvious that he's a center, there's no discussion remaining... he defends the paint, it's what he does.

[DwayneSchintzus]

That might be the dumbest thing I've ever seen written on these boards.

if you take it literally, yes it is. my point is that he is listed by the team at power forward, and has been his whole career. who are you (or anyone else) to say what position he plays? I'll go with what duncan says, and what his coach says.

do you watch the game and say "oh he just posted up, he's a center now. oh wait, he just shot a 15 footer, i guess he's back at power forward"? or do you say, he posted up 51% of the time, and played outside 49% of the time, so he is a center?

when lebron brings the ball up the court, does he shift to point guard? did jordan shift to center when he played back to the basket?

of course not.

if his team lists him at power forward, that is his position. it is not for you to tell him or pop what his position is...

He's never been officially listed as a center by NBA.com but that's meaningless, because the people who run that site are careless, prone to error and misrepresentation.

yes, nba.com is wrong and "tsherkin" is the authority on which position nba players play.

The fact that his own COACH has talked about him as a center

what about the fact that duncan says he is a power forward?

Your argument is hollow and lacks significant supporting evidence.

i would say the same to you. your argument is based not on any sort of subjective information, but rather your interpretation of duncan's play vs. your interpretation of what a power forward or center does. there is no standard definition of a "center" or "power forward" that we can measure duncan's game by, therefore, my point is we can only go by

1. the position his team lists him at

2. the position he says he plays.

All you can say is that he's labeled as a center, you've got no substantive rebuttal to real points discussing the nature of the game.

now you're getting mixed up. i'm saying he's a power forward, you're saying he's a center.

Duncan was listed as a 5 at Wake Forest and is listed as a Forward-Center on more than one sports webpage (such as Sportsnet and basketball-reference.com) and is listed outright as a center on ESPN.

players' positions change all the time when they go from college to the NBA.

so nba.com is wrong and "sportsnet" is correct?

And one wonders how things might change now that an NBA All-Star panel has labeled Duncan as a center.

i wonder how your argument might change now that their decision was reversed and he was subsequently re-listed as a power forward, and all his votes counted toward him as a power-forward.

[penbeast0]

If Duncan is considered as a center, he's the best since Shaq slowed and the second best since Hakeem retired (Robinson didn't accomplish as much as Duncan has, I think I have to give the edge to Timmy but can see putting the Admiral or Moses ahead of him). That would make him somewhere in the region of the 6th-8th best center of all time (with Walton and Mikan as the wildcards not on the list due to injuries/era respectively):

Wilt
Kareem
Russell
Shaq
Hakeem

Duncan?
David Robinson
Moses Malone
Patrick Ewing
Artis Gilmore

[tsherkin]

if you take it literally, yes it is. my point is that he is listed by the team at power forward, and has been his whole career. who are you (or anyone else) to say what position he plays? I'll go with what duncan says, and what his coach says.

I think it was clear that you were using hyperbole there; my response was more of the same. Few posters would be that stupid and your previous comments made it clear that you were not among them.

As for your ad hominem attack, I'm an observer who doesn't have to coddle Duncan's ego, nor Duncan himself. Duncan's own words reflect that he views the notion of the center as being too limited a position and he feels that he can do more than that but that's the result of his own narrow and flawed perception.

He's even less qualified to describe his position that someone like myself and his coach is, by necessity, someone who has to manage and massage egos of the players on his team...

And even Popovich has allowed that Duncan is a center before.

do you watch the game and say "oh he just posted up, he's a center now. oh wait, he just shot a 15 footer, i guess he's back at power forward"? or do you say, he posted up 51% of the time, and played outside 49% of the time, so he is a center?

No, I watch how his game goes. Duncan's game is founded upon his ability to score inside and defend the paint. He uses a classic array of moves from the post, complementing them with a jumper that is nothing more than the proper development of a well-rounded offensive arsenal.

The team's offense is built around his movement in and out of the post, but primarily around his presence in the paint... and their defense is certainly anchored by his presence there. He is, in all aspects of the game, a center who can involve himself out of the paint a few times a game (reflected in the incredible low number of attempts he takes outside of the traditional areas on a per-game basis).

But to watch him, you don't think power forward; his game is not perimeter-oriented, it's interior-oriented and complemented by his proficiency as a perimeter shooter.

when lebron brings the ball up the court, does he shift to point guard? did jordan shift to center when he played back to the basket?

More hyperbole; the balance of Lebron's game is played as a perimeter scorer but the volume of possessions he commands and his passing ability make him a versatile player. I'd call him a point forward faster than a point guard but yes, I'd be inclined to do so over calling him a classic small forward, especially because he spends time on the other team's 4 defensively now and again and works hard on the glass. But, since his primary role is that of a scorer, I would most certainly not call him a point guard.

Regarding Jordan, it's foolish to make that comment as well, since for the bulk of his career, the majority of his offense came off of slashing drives to the hoop and mid-range jumpers and even after he started to post up more regularly, that was merely a complementary aspect of his game and he was still using his mid-range jumper and dribble attack quite frequently.

The difference here, one that you've clearly missed, is that Duncan's primary mode of attack is from the low post. He sets up down there a LOT more frequently than he does anything else and he's 100% center on defense based on the nature of his defensive role.

yes, nba.com is wrong and "tsherkin" is the authority on which position nba players play.

NBA.com listed him at 7 feet for 8.5 years; since they now list him at 6'11, reflecting his real height, it'sfunctionally clear that they are no authority of any kind. Again, you trying to attack me personally is meaningless. I don't care what you think of my opinion because my opinion is based on empirical evidence, stylistic comparisons and other such data, not subjective attacks on my debate partner's credibility in making judgments on this topic.

what about the fact that duncan says he is a power forward?

What about the fact that OJ Simpson pleaded "not guilty?"

would say the same to you. your argument is based not on any sort of subjective information, but rather your interpretation of duncan's play vs. your interpretation of what a power forward or center does. there is no standard definition of a "center" or "power forward" that we can measure duncan's game by, therefore, my point is we can only go by

You'd be wrong though, since my data is considerably more convincing that "NBA.com says so" and "who are you to say he's a center?"

Furthermore, you're wrong; there IS a fairly standard definition of what a center is... if you collect information on the most notable centers of the past half century or so, you get a fairly good idea of what to expect out of a center. Yes, it's true that the game has evolved in the aftermath of Magic and Bird and in the wake of the influx of European players but some guys are still centers, just more well-rounded than others.

Wilt had a 15-footer and wasn't afraid to use it; was he a PF?

Why is it that Duncan is the most prominent and prolific player on the Spurs' roster and that his centers are pretty much always guys who can step away from the basket and hit a mid-ranged jumper to open up the post for Timmy?

He works from inside as his first option. He defends the paint like a classic center. He's the team's leading rebounder and he does most of his non-scoring damage on offense passing from the post after a touch inside to suck in the defense. He's a post-scoring threat. He's 6'11 and a shot-blocker.

That's pretty well the classic definition of a center, straight from a basketball book.

And yes, that was a typo in my previous post and I meant to write power forward. Congratulations, it really supports your argument...

players' positions change all the time when they go from college to the NBA.

so nba.com is wrong and "sportsnet" is correct?

But that's precisely my point; there are more sites that list him as a F-C or C outright than there are that list him solely as a F or PF. Basketball-reference.com, 82games.com, Sportsnet, ESPN, there are tons of sites that list C in his position.

My point is very much that the labels presented by websites are subjective and not terribly useful.

i wonder how your argument might change now that their decision was reversed and he was subsequently re-listed as a power forward, and all his votes counted toward him as a power-forward.

It wouldn't; I've been making this argument for a decade now because he's never really been a PF at any point in his career.

[CoachPop]

Everyone hates the Spurs but you have to respect them. I think they have to be in top 10 teams of all time but I have an off topic question.

Tim Duncan was scouted as the best center prospect out of college. But Spurs had David Robinson and thought that they could use Duncan's versatility to play PF with the idea when David left he would move over. The 1st year after DRob's retirement Tim played C but wasnt as effective or dominate leading to a string of different centers since.

Now there is another forum and no one denies Tim is top PF of all-time. But if he played center I dont even think he gets in top 5. Typically your 7 foot 260lbs players are centers but if we graded Tim as a center is he anywhere near the player he is as a PF?

Actually, the year after Robinson retired, we signed Rasho Nesterovic away from Minnesota, so Timmy didn't play any or much center at all. That was when we were still in the "twin towers" mode, and hadn't yet embraced small ball. In actuality, it's only in the last couple years, as the league has gotten smaller, that Timmy has played more at the 5, with Horry et al playing the 4.

So the only reason Duncan can be considered a 5 is because he, and the Spurs, have quite naturally adapted to trends in the league away from the traditional big lumbering 5. Putting out another 3 point shooter at the 4 maximized the effectiveness of the team, and so that is what they do. And because of that, Timmy moves over to the 5 spot, which in turn causes some people to, mistakenly, claim that he is a 5.

[DwayneSchintzus]

Duncan's own words reflect that he views the notion of the center as being too limited a position and he feels that he can do more than that but that's the result of his own narrow and flawed perception.

that's your interpretation of his interpretation.

He's even less qualified to describe his position that someone like myself

how are you more qualified to describe the power forward position than Tim Duncan? i'm going to go on record here and say that a guy that has played in the NBA for 10 years, and has led his team to 4 titles, and has two MVP awards, is more qualified than you or anyone else on this board on the subject.

charles barkley also called him the greatest power forward of all time. do you also know more about basketball than barkley?

And even Popovich has allowed that Duncan is a center before.

you keep stating this, can you substantiate it?

The difference here, one that you've clearly missed, is that Duncan's primary mode of attack is from the low post. He sets up down there a LOT more frequently than he does anything else and he's 100% center on defense based on the nature of his defensive role.

the difference here is the standard you are applying. you are watching the game and applying your interpretation of what a "center" or "power forward" is. i am telling you that if the guy's listed at power forward, he's a power forward. and the spurs have listed him at forward his whole career.

NBA.com listed him at 7 feet for 8.5 years; since they now list him at 6'11, reflecting his real height, it's functionally clear that they are no authority of any kind.

that is a classic example of a "non sequitur". i already explained why the spurs listed him at 7 feet previously. if there is incorrect information on a website, that does not make it "functionally clear that they are no authority of any kind". it is true that he is not 7 feet tall. however, if i say the world is flat, it doesn't mean that i am "no authority of any kind", it means I am wrong about something.

I don't care what you think of my opinion because my opinion is based on empirical evidence, stylistic comparisons and other such data, not subjective attacks on my debate partner's credibility in making judgments on this topic.

What about the fact that OJ Simpson pleaded "not guilty?"

you think oj did it???

Wilt had a 15-footer and wasn't afraid to use it; was he a PF?

what makes a power forward? his size, his game, what he says, what his coach says, statistics, where he plays defensively, what "tsherkin" says, or what the box score has said for 10 years?

And yes, that was a typo in my previous post and I meant to write power forward. Congratulations, it really supports your argument...

don't be so condescending in making your points and think that i won't in turn point out your mistakes.

But that's precisely my point; there are more sites that list him as a F-C or C outright than there are that list him solely as a F or PF. Basketball-reference.com, 82games.com, Sportsnet, ESPN, there are tons of sites that list C in his position.

so one way to determine a player's position is to count how many websites have him listed in each position, and then compare the total?

It wouldn't; I've been making this argument for a decade now because he's never really been a PF at any point in his career.

i could make the argument i had a 12 incher for 50 years, it doesn't make it true.

[penbeast0]

[quote="DW Rutledge"][\quote]

I love Barkley, he's a lot of fun, but yeah, Tsherkin probably does know more about analyzing basketball than Charles.

[tsherkin]

how are you more qualified to describe the power forward position than Tim Duncan? i'm going to go on record here and say that a guy that has played in the NBA for 10 years, and has led his team to 4 titles, and has two MVP awards, is more qualified than you or anyone else on this board on the subject.

Why do you associate playing with knowledge of the game? Why is it that you assume that playing ability and knowledge correlate? How does this interact with the notion that most great players who try to be coaches are usually awful?

Tim Duncan has excellent physical attributes, developed skills and basketball instincts honed by years of practice but he has a VERY different perspective on the game than do I or any other observer outside of the NBPA. This is like asking why a scholar of political science is capable of more detailed observation than a member of an existing government.

Possession of historical context and trend analysis, volume of data and such things all weigh into this conversation.

charles barkley also called him the greatest power forward of all time. do you also know more about basketball than barkley?

Almost certainly. The details of the playbooks of Philadelphia in the 80s and Phoenix in the 90s, not so much, but Barkley is so garishly wrong so often that a 6 year-old can't help but know more about the game if they devote some attention to it. And of course Barkley and math don't seem to go all that well together, so I can't imagine he's an especially astute statistician in even the most basic of senses.

you keep stating this, can you substantiate it?

I can, I'm just looking for the quote; I'll find it for you and I'll post immediately upon so doing.

the difference here is the standard you are applying. you are watching the game and applying your interpretation of what a "center" or "power forward" is. i am telling you that if the guy's listed at power forward, he's a power forward. and the spurs have listed him at forward his whole career.

You're still talking about labels as if the labels given by the team are meaningful. Duncan plays like a half-century of centers before him, only with a little twist that still leaves him predominantly playing in the style of 50+ years of centers and in a very similar fashion to many centers.

Hakeem Olajuwon had a better face-up game and used his perimeter jumper more often. Other than that, he was a similar defender stylistically (only more athletic) and, like Duncan, did most of his damage in the low post.

Was he a PF?

No, that's ridiculous, he was very clearly a center.

So how is it that because Duncan is called a PF by NBA.com and his team that he's a PF and Dream wasn't?

This is why your argument is preposterous.

that is a classic example of a "non sequitur". i already explained why the spurs listed him at 7 feet previously. if there is incorrect information on a website, that does not make it "functionally clear that they are no authority of any kind". it is true that he is not 7 feet tall. however, if i say the world is flat, it doesn't mean that i am "no authority of any kind", it means I am wrong about something.

This is most certainly related; I'm talking about the official NBA press release on Duncan's height, not the team data from the Spurs.

NBA.com lists Garnett as 6'11, 220... he hasn't been 220 in almost a decade and he isn't 6'11 either. For years, players, coaches and analysts (as well as Garnett himself) have joked that he's 6'13, because he's at least 7 feet tall and he's also closer to 250 than 220 these days.

NBA.com is lax about it's listings and the listings on the team sites come from the NBA database, not from team data, so they remain erroneous.

This is the kind of thing behind the notion that NBA.com is no real authority on anything besides schedules and raw, unadjusted stats.

what makes a power forward? his size, his game, what he says, what his coach says, statistics, where he plays defensively, what "tsherkin" says, or what the box score has said for 10 years?

Again, you're not really saying anything except trying to devalue my contributions.

Based on players like Dave Cowens, Bob McAdoo, Bill Walton, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and others, it's clear that Duncan's comments (as previously quoted) are actually factually incorrect and his resistance to the center label (which he himself stated was on account of how limited the center's role on offense was, to paraphrase) was actually wildly incorrect based on a significant number of historical examples.

don't be so condescending in making your points and think that i won't in turn point out your mistakes.

One might suppose that this is a two-way comment...

so one way to determine a player's position is to count how many websites have him listed in each position, and then compare the total?

No, that wasn't my point at all; rather, it was that the NBA site is far from the only source of information on the topic and that it's clear that the perception of Duncan is more commonly that of a center rather than that of a power forward.

ESPN is a gigantic sports site with at least marginally more attention paid to reality than NBA.com and a heavier reliance on companies like the Elias Sports Bureau specifically devoted to dealing with the minutiae of sports trivia. NBA.com, resistant as any site to any kind of major changes, is one of the slowest to adapt, to change, to account for new data, etc.

They thought their Tendex-style efficiency stat was a revolution when they first started using it and they now believe unadjusted +/- to be of value when the scholarly community is already leagues beyond them.

They are not a viable source of advanced information and they have consistently proven unreliable for height/weight data. On the basis of what merits should one trust their assigning of positional data?

They list Chris Bosh as a F, not a F-C, when anyone who watches Raptors ball will tell you he plays a lot of time at the 5 and has for several years now. They do the same with Kris Humphries.

They think Amare Stoudemire is a pure center who never plays the PF, even though he hit the league as a PF and often plays alongside Shaq.

Their track record for positional data is as weak as their record for height and weight data, making them UNRELIABLE as a source of information in this argument.

[NO-KG-AI]

I'd say tsherkin knows more about the game of basketball than Chuck can ever hope to know

Playing in the NBA doesn't grant you a special knowledge of basketball that puts you on some higher level.

Oh, and Duncan is most definitely a center, the average fan will regard him as the greatest PF of all time, but the rest of us will know he is a center.

Really the only argument that makes Duncan a PF is because David Robinson was there first, and he can hit jumpers.

Steve Nash is a PG in the truest sense of the word, Chris Paul also, what if they both get traded to Dallas and start, does that make Kidd/NAsh/Paul a SG/SF?

Style of play, and function on the team determines position, not some false label on website.

[penbeast0]

Tsherkin, I will disagree with you on this one a bit . . . despite your Barkleyesque knowledge level . . .

The positional labels are labels of convenience and as such are defined by a level of popularly accepted convention. Each team is considered to have a point guard, a shooting guard, a small forward, a power forward, and a center on the floor at all times . . . even if the small forward is the leading assist man (hi LeBron), the shooting guard is a poor shooting defensive specialist (TR Dunn), the small forward is 6-11 (Larry Nance in Phoenix), the power forward is the team's 4th leading rebounder (Kiki Vandeweghe), and the center is a non-posting jump shooter who rarely blocks shots (Dan Issel to continue my Denver trend).

Except for the PG position which tends to be based on who brings the ball up and initiates the offense (and which you seem to think doesn't exist on quite a few teams if you don't think Oscar Robertson or Jerry West were their teams' point guards); conventionally accepted wisdom generally accepts size as the main determinant of who plays where (there is some positional typecasting but it is less important). PG is different because players like Magic and Oscar dominated the ballhandling role to such an extent that despite Magic's 6-9 frame, he was considered the PG.

Otherwise, guys like Elvin Hayes who was the prototype center (set up in the low post on offense, was the shot blocker and help defender on defense) were considered forwards while Wes Unseld (played like a typical PF of the day both offensively and defensively but was 300 pounds) was considered a center. So, you have to look at who the player is playing with to determine what position he is considered to be playing on the floor and give the benefit of the doubt to the position his team lists him at. Also appropo to the Hayes/Unseld issue (and I always thought of Hayes as the C) is the history of a player being listed at a position. Unseld was clearly the center when playing with Gus Johnson and Jack Marin so he was the established player at that position when they traded for Hayes.

Duncan is reasonably considered a PF playing next to the bigger David Robinson or Nesterovic. It is far less obvious when playing next to Nazr Mohammed but Nazr had already made his rep as a center and Duncan had been listed as a PF from David Robinson's era so that was still reasonably. On the other hand, when Malik Rose came in for the starting center, it is clear (to the extent that positions matter) that Duncan shifted over to center.

On an unrelated point, Magic's start at "center" in the NBA finals would probably not have been considered to be a center unless they had announced it as such since most people would have assumed that the PF (was it Rambis?) would shift to center, Worthy to PF, and Cooper in at SF. But again, his team said he was a center and that's what the popularly accepted positional analysis of that final has become.

Edit/addition: So, my long rambling point is that positions are mainly a popularly accepted convention . . . and the accepted convention is that Ducan has spent most of his career starting at PF.

[DwayneSchintzus]

don't be so condescending in making your points and think that i won't in turn point out your mistakes.

One might suppose that this is a two-way comment...

but i'm not complaing about your condescending attitude, i'm telling you that if you have that attitude, expect your mistakes to be pointed out.

the difference lies in how each of us defines the words "center" and "power forward". you want to watch the game and come to your own
conclusions, i want to go by what the team lists him as, and what the box score says.

i also disagree with your notion that we, as observers, know more about a subject than participants.

i have a ton to say, i could go on forever, but i gotta move on with my life so i'll just have to agree to disagree with you. good day to you sir.

[tsherkin]

but i'm not complaing about your condescending attitude, i'm telling you that if you have that attitude, expect your mistakes to be pointed out.

You're making more of this than there was, I made a snide remark in reply to your snide remark. Clearly, neither of us cares that much and we can move on.

the difference lies in how each of us defines the words "center" and "power forward". you want to watch the game and come to your own
conclusions, i want to go by what the team lists him as, and what the box score says.

i also disagree with your notion that we, as observers, know more about a subject than participants.

i have a ton to say, i could go on forever, but i gotta move on with my life so i'll just have to agree to disagree with you. good day to you sir.

Ah, the cop-out. Enjoy.