Talk:Center (basketball)

Intentional Fouling (a.k.a. Hack-a-Shaq)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/intentionally-fouling-deandre-jordan-is-futile

Hack a Shaq strategies have been shown to be significantly less effective than previously thought. 50% FT shooting rate when teams routinely score more than 1 pt per possession on average seems to imply that a team should foul a poor FT shooter every time, even if the team is in the double bonus. This is not the case however, as offensive rebounds, inability to get fast break points (which are, on average, worth more than a half court possession) after made free throws and almost no chance of a turnover (which leads to more points on average than a typical fast break) if purposefully fouling lead to a much more nuanced situation. For example, in cases where a team has very good rebounders and a very solid half court defense, a poor (60% or so) free throw shooter should not be fouled. Even with a team that has a weaker half court defense, weak offensive rebounding and a very poor (50%) free throw shooter, the Hack a Shaq strategy is still only a very marginal improvement, much less so than conventional wisdom seems to imply.

Even if there is a case for using the Hack a Shaq strategy, a couple of points per 100 possessions is most often insignificant as this strategy is only ever employed at the very end of the game for only a handful of possessions, leading to a statistical gain of fractions of a point per game on average. This is actually the strongest case for rewriting the NBA rules to discourage Hack a Shaq strategies. Rarely does it make sense, it is often incorrectly used and even when it does make sense, it leads to almost no difference other than to annoy fans with the switch from basketball to a FT competition in the waning minutes of what could be a close, and exciting, competition.

At the very least, this should be a section with pros and cons of intentional fouling of a bad FT shooter, not the main section.

155.101.8.198 (talk) 16:40, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

References

Untitled

Added section on size differences in East Vs West, free throws, defense: blocks, importance of centers and recent championship teams with notable centers. 20:47, 28 April, 2007.

Added Marcus Camby and Zaza Pachulia, though Pachulia may be taken off.

Added Erick Dampier (the Man).

I took out Chris Mihm from the list of notable centers. He's definitely not in the same league as the others in the list. Julescubtree 20:05, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Looked at the edits by 24.205.37.142: I again took out Chris Mihm from the list. Re-added Amare Stoudemire, who *is* a notable center. Jamaal Magloire gets to stay by virtue of his All-Star selection. Julescubtree 23:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

It's becoming more of a list of starting centers in the NBA rather than notable centers. There are 21 centers there, almost 3/4 of the entire NBA. I would delete Fabricio Oberto, Mark Blount, Kendrick Perkins, Andrew Bynum, Darko Milicic, Chris Kaman and Samuel Dalembert. Pau Gasol could be added though, an All-Star and good player in international games.

nene is listed as a power forward not a center

"Shaquille O'Neal, now indisputably the greatest player in the NBA", this is an opinion and should not be included as fact.

A LOT of this article is opinions or unverifyable. Article needs major editing to bring this up to standards. There is only one source I would consider reliable, and the other "references" are pointers to nba.com. The kneejerk reaction to remove the -wikify and -unreferenced tags is pretty telling to me the type of people who edit this page. I would also try to add -selfpublished (there are about 6 links to nba.com) but someone would just remove it with a lame excuse.--Dj245 01:08, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I added some more precise tags. This article is a nightmare; I'm almost tempted to start from scratch, but will hold off for the time being.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 01:19, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Playing Styles

A section on center playing styles would be nice to add. I would guess that the major (offensive) styles would be power (e.g. Shaq), finesse (Hakeem Olajuwon), shooting (Patrick Ewing), and playmaking (Arvydas Sabonis), but that is just my opinion. Of course, many centers would fall under multiple catagories.

DaDoc540 (talk) 02:56, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

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