McDermott is 6'8" 225'. Bigger than Pwill. Crowder is 6'6" but is 234'. Even if they didn't include them, the average wouldn't have changed.GoBlue72391 wrote:Stratmaster wrote:If the average height and weight is 6'8.2"/230 then a reasonable assumption (although not necessarily certain) is that half are bigger than that. Meaning if you are playing, for example, a 6'6" 210 PF more than half are going to have a height and weight advantage.GoBlue72391 wrote:What's your source for that? If the average PF height really is 6'8" then wouldn't that just confirm what I said? I said most modern PFs are 6'6"-6'8" SFs playing out of position. It seems like that average is the result of a number of PFs under 6'8" dragging the average down offset by a number of 6'10"+ PFs boosting the average back up to an overall average of 6'8".
It would largely depend on what position players are considered when coming up with that calculation. Questions like was Tatum, Giannis, LeBron, McDermott, DeRozan, Crowder, Tucker, etc. counted as a PF or SF? It's hard to come up with an average height considering how positions are less defined nowadays and the line is often blurred between SF and PF. To me, it's less about strictly heights and more about whether a player is a wing or a big, but on the whole the wings will be shorter than the bigs. Guys like Tatum and Kyle Anderson are 6'9" so they're technically above the average 6'8" height for a PF you claim, but they're clearly wings and not bigs. Hell, KD is over 7'0" but I don't think many people would consider him a big.
It's not just limited minutes of small ball around the league; I went and looked at every team's most-used starting lineup and most used lineup period (meaning not necessarily starting lineup, just the 5 man unit that played the most minutes together) from last season and this is what I came up with:
Starting lineups: 15/30 (50%) teams started 1 PG, 3 wings and 1 big
Most used lineups overall: 14/30 (47%) teams used 1 PG, 3 wings and 1 big
When looking through the lineups I was less focused on height and more focused on whether the player is a wing or a big. Some of it is a judgement call, like Dray is only 6'6" but he's clearly a big because he does big man duties, so I counted him as a big. On the other hand, P.J. is Tucker is 6'5" and plays PF/C but to me he's more of a wing than an actual big because he spends most of his time spotting up in the corner and defending the perimeter.
So it's pretty clear that small ball/1 PG, 3 wings and 1 big lineups isn't just some limited/situational thing, it's roughly half of the entire league. This is a regular, common thing nowadays. I was offbase for claiming "most modern PFs are 6'6"-68" SFs playing out of position" when I should have said "half." That was an exaggeration on my part, but my overall point still stands.
Of course, not all "wings" are created equal. There are shorter guys who "play taller". There are less heavy guys who "play bigger". The average SF is 6'6.4". But some are 6'9", taller than the average NBA PF. Hell, there are PG'S taller than 6'8". But I don't see that guy on the Bulls. The 7'0" average wingspan is also an interesting number.
As far as sources, there were multiple and they all came in at the same numbers. It was a simple Google. Here is one of them:
https://www.thehoopsgeek.com/average-nba-height/
I don't care if you call them wings, bigs or whatever. The Bulls are undersized right now with the lineups people are throwing around. They need a big who can provide interior defense and rebounding or my fear is they are going to get bullied. Pun too obvious to be unintended.
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I agree that we need at least 1 true PF with size to combat bigger lineups to prevent getting bullied as we are very small and lacking frontcourt depth. I've said before, we're one injury or player underperforming away from being forced to play ultra-small ball at all times and that is less than ideal.
As for the average heights, I said as much myself that the 6'8" average is likely a result of half the PFs being shorter and the other half being taller. My main concern with that average though is who exactly was counted as a PF when they calculated that number? If guys like Crowder, Tucker, McDermott, etc. were counted as SFs rather than PFs then that's going to artificially inflate the average height for PFs, so the actual average height could actually be lower than the listed 6'8". It depends on if guys are counted as their natural positions or the positions they've most frequently played in recent years. Like Crowder is a natural SF but he's played more PF in recent years, so what position did they count him as?
It even says in the "notes" section of that article that the data was collected from Basketball-Reference and has a number of shortcomings, including:
- Players are assigned a single position per season. In reality, a lot of players play multiple positions every game. For example, some players start games as a shooting guard but take over point guard duties with a bench unit later
- Height and weight data is registered once per player. This means that the data has Shaq weighing exactly 325lbs every season, and we all know that that’s not true
Based off B-R, guys like Tucker, Crowder, and McDermott's positions are all listed as SF first and other positions second/third, so I assume that data counted those players, and others like them, as SFs rather than PFs when determining the average height for PF, leading to an average of 6'8" that probably isn't all that accurate. I'm of the opinion that they should be counted among the position they have most frequently played in a given season rather than counted among their natural position.
My understanding is BBREF list the player at the position they played the most minutes at. But we are talking past the point.
The Bulls do not have any quality player as big as the AVERAGE PF to play at the 4. And after PWill it ain't even close.
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