Top 20 Centers

[CB4MiamiHeat]

the Center position is not that bad anymore if you think about it.......

[MnM_McgradyMing]

the Center position is not that bad anymore if you think about it.......

Dwight, Amare (Sorta), Yao, Oden........It's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

[tsherkin]

Al Horford, Kendrick Perkins (solid, if unspectacular), Emeka Okafor, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Marcus Camby, Andris Biedrins, Yao Ming, Jermaine O'neal, Chris Kaman, Andrew Bynum, Andrew Bogut, Al Jefferson (sort of), Tyson Chandler, Dwight Howard, Samuel Dalembert, Shaq, Greg Oden (coming up), Brad Miller, Tim Duncan and Brendan Haywood...

The center crop is pretty interesting. Of those, Yao, Kaman, Bynum, Jefferon (if he counts), Dwight, Duncan and Oden (if he succeeds) are all compelling offensive forces to consider while the rest are noteworthy starters as rebounders and/or defenders.

[Malinhion]

You did not account that Dwight could have dunked the ball off putbacks, and given his athleticism I wouldn't be surprised if most of the points scored from offensive glass are dunks. Given that Yao does have slightly more tip-ins, Dwight would probably exceed Yao in putbacks because he could dunk the ball before it even bounced away from the rim.

Yes, I did. That's how tip-ins are counted, of which Yao gets more. The entire point of that portion was to measure out put-backs. Regardless, the inside scoring is counted later as an aggregate.

Not all the points scored in the low post are in the paint. Yao in his early year ran into trouble scoring because his 7'5 and long arms caused him to commit offensive fouls easily, so he decide to work on a finesse game that will allow him to hit shots from a distance.

It's not just paint points. It's jumpshots vs. inside scoring, the latter of which is comprised of tip-ins, dunks, and inside shots.

Having a finesse game won't keep you from shooting 50%, though. Very solid, but not the percentage you'd expect from the league's best 5.

Look at the Hakeem video http://youtube.com/watch?v=29WpgU0pqN8, even though he made shots by his low post moves they were not inside the paint.

I hope you're joking. Hakeem was the most fluid and agile big man in the history of the game. Yao could not be further from it.

Onto the FT argument, anyone who shoots 59% will get fouled by a ton, part of it is because Dwight can be hard to stop once he's in good position, but the other part have everything to do with teams wanting him to come up with nothing. Just because it took you 20 shots to get 10 points doesn't mean you outdid someone who scored 9 points off 11 shots.

Then is stands to reason that Yao is fouled less because he plays farther from the basket and shoots a lower FG%. How is this a knock against Dwight? You're not critiquing his game. You're saying that he has one great thing (the ability to draw FTs) because he's great at something else (high FG%).

What is this 20 shots/10 points and 9 points/11 shots talk? Yao takes 3.5 more shots but only scores one more point. His PPS is clearly less. I'm not sure what kind of subversive argument you're trying to make here.

Looking at Hollinger's statistics, Yao is estimated to be involved in 25 possessions a game, whereas Dwight is only at 21.4. If Dwight is truly the leading scorer of the team, how come the amount of possessions he has is only slightly above Big Z and Bogut? If you think there's something fishy about his formula, you can take FGA, FTA, TOs, Asst, and team pace(90 possessions for Rockets, 93 for Magic) for Dwight and Yao to get a feel of the difference. Additionally, even though Dwight doesn't end a possession as much, 15% of his possession came out to be turnovers, while Yao is only at 13.6%.

Because he's a young developing post player, in his first year under a new coach, playing with the MIP and a guy who just got a max contract. If you don't think that situation will often result in a strange shot distribution, you're simply wrong. Like I said, Dwight will get more touches next year. There is no reason to expect otherwise. Dwight proved in the playoffs that nothing could keep him from getting his hands on the ball when he wanted it.

Not a significant difference, but the fact that Dwight doesn't possess the ball that much and still turns it over at a higher rate than the other top rated PER centers is telling of his inability to handle the ball in the low post. Also, the fact that Dwight gets assisted on a higher percentage on virtually every type of shot selection than Yao already tells you that Dwight benefits more from his teammates than does Yao.

This argument is disingenuous. I have already proven that Dwight scores at least the same, if not more points than Yao, in the paint while unassisted.