NBA BASKETBALL FAN EDITORIAL
Lack of Great Centers Good for the Game

By LYNDA ALLAN                   September 17, 2001

I've been following the game of basketball since I was a pre-teen. I've seen Chamberlain and Russell and Unseld; I have Kareem's autograph, remember the day Ewing was drafted and saw Hakeem walk onto the court for the very first time. Know what? With the exception of Russell and Chamberlain I'm glad there aren't that many big centers any more. Watch one Laker game, you've seen them all: walk the ball up the court, toss it in to Shaq, watch him dislodge his defender so he can get 2 ft. away from the basket then toss the ball in. BORING! That IS NOT the way the game of basketball was supposed to be played, but IT IS why the game has lost a lot of fans along the way. The big centers slow the game down, basically taking everyone else out of the game while they "do their thing," doing nothing for fans other than giving everyone time to go to the bathroom or the concession stand for another beer! Basketball was meant to be a game with a lot of running, player movement, precision passing, and sharp-shooting. But the owners reasoned that they could win, thereby making more money, if they could put the biggest guy out on the floor. "My guy is bigger than your guy" is only a derivative of the schoolboy game played for higher stakes than bragging rights - millions of dollars. I'm glad to see the big centers dwindling, especially those who can do little more than jam the ball through the basket and can't make a basket 5-feet out. It's funny that centers with mulitiple skills, instead of just size, like Divac, for example, are considered lesser players, when in fact a guy who's 7-feet tall and can make a shot from the top of the key or a throw a precision pass to a teammate on the move is much more enjoyable to watch than one that is one-dimensional.