Best centre in the NBA right now - Marc Gasol?

[rikhardur]

Sport-scene conducted a poll to determine who's currently the best centre in the NBA. The results are below. What do you think, is Marc Gasol really the best? Or are people getting carried away because he was recently awarded defensive player of the year?

[CKR13]

The NBA atmosphere about aggregated opinions when it comes to who's the current best is very fickle and changes quite easily changes season after season. But this does not mean that Marc Gasol being the NBA's best center is invalid. This shows that the American centers has met its heyday during the 90's where O'Neal, Robinson, Olajuwon and Mourning prowled the lane. These days, pure American centers that are multi-faceted are a rarity and are considered near extinct.

Most centers nowadays prefer the upwardly mobile game of facing up rather than backing down. This season, international centers have proven their worth. Started with the consistency and constant production of Marc Gasol, flashes of stardom from Anderson Varejao and a glimpse of potential from Nikola Vucevic, Omer Asik and Jonas Valanciunas.

[NorCal]

With the rule changes in the mid-2000s coupled with the change in defensive philosophies whereby many defenses crowd the ball side and come off their man to help much, much earlier than in the past, and on offense the general change leaguewide towards spread offenses to counteract those defenses (necessitating more outside shooting, slashers who can attack the paint and take advantage of the handcheck rules and the open key)- these changes have gradually phased out the traditional big man and moved the league more towards PFs who can shoot and on defense can defend the pick and roll and rotate for help more quickly.

That's my long explanation for my main point that traditional big men are not as important in the NBA anymore, the changes in the league have led to a faster game than before, driving the # of teams that run their offenses through a true post presence down. A lot of the Centers on the list above are essentially specialists, asked only to be great defenders, to rebound and to maybe run some pick and rolls (Asik, Sanders, Chandler, Jordan, Varejao, McGee) Some teams don't even start a true Center anymore such as the Heat or the Celtics. So the Center position tends to be considered the weakest position as for elite talent in the league. It has a lot of very good players but no one in the top 10 in the NBA. Gasol might have had the best year out of the bunch, he really has been great defensively and offensively he has done a little bit of everything for the Grizzlies. Personally, I have him, Howard and Duncan (he's more of a Center than some of the guys on the list) as the top 3 Centers for this year.