Aldridge: Power Forward or Center

Buck played at the end of an era. I am not so sure how Buck would do in an era where most PF are 6'11 and some are even 7 feet tall. During his day, most were 6'8"'ish.

That being said, I wish Dante's only problem was weight, but it's not.

 

It's true... 20 years ago, Dante would be a poor man's Detlef Schremph or Buck Williams lite; today he's a second rounder scraping by. And Buck might not be half the player today that he was in 1986.

I don't know who I would put at PF next to Aldridge, at least that we could get. Really, on offense, LMA is always the center, no matter who is actually playing C. Joel is a banging PF with LMA in the game; Camby is a stretch 4 with passing ability. If the only definition is height, then they are centers, but LMA has been our true Center since 12/17.

 

I said center but I don't really care much what label you put on him. He's capable of defending either position, he's showing a go-to scorer's mentality in the paint and whomever you pair him up with needs a similar build and/or ability to operate in either position -- Camby Junior (Randolph) could work because of his length and raw shot blocking ability, or maybe there's some PF-C in the draft (Enes Kanter would be my pipe dream) to match up with him.

Beyond finding a more reliable and younger replacement for Camby, I'd still try to maybe keep Oden around and hope that the 25 games a year that he's healthy coincide with the playoffs, so you have a really big body to throw in the middle for those times that you really need some beef and to eat up space, but I think the NBA is definitely trending towards more mobile, agile and versatile centers and having a guy like him isn't maybe as necessary as it was in the bygone era when Shaq was terrorizing the league.

 

Why would you have to put a smaller player next to him? Also it seems to me you have not watched Aldrige in the past few months. It seems pretty hard to call a dude soft when he has been averaging 25 and 10 for a really long time now. Have you even been paying attention to recent events? Yea he isn't the toughest guy in the world. But he isn't the guy that I had to worry about his rebounding anymore, either. In fact, it has become quite the opposite. If Aldridge doesn't get 10 rebounds now I am suprised. Outside shots are pretty rare too. It's all about the paint, and shots about 2 feet from the rim.

 

In today's NBA, I think the 4-5 are pretty interchangable.

 

Yeah, it seems like, instead of the Lone Big Man, you have the Lone Ball Handler. 4/5 are interchangeable, as are 2/3 many times. It's the "True Point Guard" who is the hot commodity (where the Really Tall Guy was the hot commodity in the 60's and 70's).

 

Gasol is playing at nearly exactly the same level on the Lakers, probably a bit better on defense. KG got really old, and tore his knee his second season with the C's.

Oh and they need talented basketball players, they could have whatever complimentary tough big and lose to a "soft" front line like Miami's. Minstrel is right, people focus too much on labels.