Modern basketball is well-guarded

SAN ANTONIO — Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, massive figures dominated basketball courts on the strength of sheer size. It seems that long ago, anyway, when centers were in the middle of everything that happened in just about every game.

Now, the concept of the stationary and imposing big man seems as antiquated as the tyrannosaurus rex. Two of the teams (Michigan and Villanova) in the Final Four here Saturday night do not even list a center in their starting lineups. And the other two, Loyola-Chicago and Kansas, do not view their centers the way teams used to.

It is an entirely new sport, in which three-pointers are bigger than the tallest players. Guards are in charge, shooting is huge and passing is an art.

“It’s really wonderful,” Oscar Robertson, one of the greatest guards ever, said here Thursday when the basketball writers presented their Oscar Robertson Award for the top college player in the country to Villanova’s Jalen Brunson, a guard.

Steve Nash, one of five former guards named to the Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday, said: “The game is skillful. And it’s beautiful to watch.” Nash was in on the start of the evolution when he was with the Phoenix Suns. He said after the Hall news conference here that his team never did have a traditional center, so it chose to go in the complete other direction: play quickly, open the floor and shoot three-pointers.

All of this year’s Final Four teams play that way, as do many successful teams at every level.

No doubt the vintage centers still would be great if they were coming along today. But their skills might be put to different uses.

“[Bill] Russell, [Wilt] Chamberlain, Nate Thurmond, those defensive players stayed under the basket,” said Robertson, their contemporary. “Now you don’t do that because you’ve got a guy that’s 6-11 who can go outside and make threes. You have to go out and follow him.

“That means as a guard, there’s a lot of territory you can go in and be very, very aggressive with, going to the basket,” he said. “When you don’t have centers blocking shots, like they did when I played, it’s a different basketball game. And I think it’s great that kids can shoot the ball the way they can.”

There also is a premium on kids who can get the ball to the kids who can shoot. Loyola made its improbable run to the Final Four largely on the strength of its deft passing.

“This thing is a thing of beauty,” Michigan coach John Beilein said Friday, a day before facing the Ramblers. “This is not Princeton in any way, but they cut without the ball. They dribble. They post. I think having the great — not good, but great — passing center has really had a great impact on them.”

Jason Kidd, another guard introduced as a Hall of Famer on Saturday, said from the dais: “A lot of us at this table enjoyed the pass, enjoyed the improvement of a teammate. We understand how important it is to pass. It makes the game fun and it keeps the rhythm to the game, too.”

In a way, the sport actually has returned to its roots. George Mikan shot from the outside. In a way, the trend is not all that great. Too many college teams get “three-happy” and fire them up when working the ball inside would be more effective. Virginia might have avoided the embarrassment of losing to No. 16 seed UMBC had it not panicked and relied only on threes.

Overall, though, it is hard to argue with the Big O. A wide-open game allows a spindly kid like Nash to make the Hall of Fame and become the idol of a less-than-perfect athletic specimen (by his own description) such as Brunson to be player of the year. It is really wonderful.