antonaki1 wrote:planetmars wrote:This is his 8th season in the NBA.. he's not great meaning he was definitely not worthy of being a lottery pick. But he's a capable bench big. The problem is that bigs are just not as important in today's NBA as they once used to be.
If a trash player that shouldn't have been in the league is a 1. And let's say a mid-level player is a 7.. then he's about a 4 or 5. But that's mainly again because of the center position and what happened to it.
During regular season maybe true enough. But come playoff time when everything slows down to the physicality of the half court, the big man becomes so much more important.
I don't think that's really true. Jokic was the only real big that made a difference in the bubble playoffs. Miami and Boston both stayed small. Lakers went small against Houston to match up with them in the second round. They used Howard against Jokic but still averaged under 20mpg (he played more in game 5). And wasn't really used at all in the finals. I don't think you need to be big to play against Lopez and Milwaukee. Miami didn't have problems for example.
OKC (Stevens), Utah (Gobert), Orlando (Vucevic) all lost in the first round.