Does anyone remember when Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey kept drafting power forwards? You probably do, because it continued all the way to the 2012 draft, in which Houston drafted Furkan Aldemir, a player you’ve probably forgotten about. Morey likes power forwards so much that of the 19 draft picks the Rockets have made in his tenure, 10 were power forwards. Plenty has been said about Morey’s strange penchant for the four spot, one tendency that seems hard to explain in the midst of his laundry list of trade victories and asset arbitrage. Do we finally have the distance to see what was going on the whole time, now? It’s been seven years of drafts since Morey took over, and the big picture is finally in view.
What’s changed that makes this penchant for fours finally find traction? Somehow, it’s the 2014 All-Star game. It takes years for trends to become readily evident in the NBA, and a couple of these trends are finally showing their faces. If we look at the returns on votes, especially in the Western Conference, the fans’ votes suggest something strange. Only power forwards and point guards seem to matter very much. Half of the frontcourt in the west is taken up by power forwards. Point guards, equally importantly, occupy seven of the ten frontcourt spots. Well, that’s strange. Let’s look at the likely candidates for the All-Star game out west.
Kobe Bryant and Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin and Dwight Howard are the vote leaders right now, meaning they would be the starters. The coaches get to choose seven more players as the reserves, choices which are much harder to predict. Those choices come in three varieties: two backcourt picks, three frontcourt picks and two wild card picks, which can be any player in the conference. So who might those be?
James Harden and Chris Paul are likely to be the backcourt picks, as those two are almost certainly the best players at their respective position currently. The frontcourt comes with a few no-brainer choices in Kevin Love, LaMarcus Aldridge and Anthony Davis. Of these three, only Davis seems possible to miss the game, but his play has been more than amazing enough to earn a berth. As for the last two spots, Russell Westbrook and Andre Iguodala seem impossible to disinclude. If we take injury into account, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook and Kobe Bryant are all questionable to return in time for the All-Star game. Any players unavailable will be replaced by the league, not the voters, and the range of replacement players opens up. Damian Lillard has likely earned himself one of these spots, Dirk Nowitzki is a perennial favorite who is as deadly as ever, and Tony Parker remains a top 15 player who somehow flies under most radar.
What, then, is the pattern here? It’s easy. Kevin Durant, Dwight Howard, Andre Iguodala, Kobe Bryant and James Harden are the only ones who aren’t point guards or power forwards. Anthony Davis might play minutes as the tallest player on the floor, and he can be argued to be a center as well, but even he is clearly a four in this league. One center, two shooting guards, two small forwards, five point guards and five power forwards. With this roster, chances are that the east will face off against lineup configurations featuring ones and fours exclusively.
Why are power forwards increasingly dominant? This is a big question, and one that the blogosphere at large has been approaching at an angle. The small ball movement, the positional revolution, the popularity of the stretch four, all these are part of the same trend. It’s not that power forwards are becoming dominant, it’s that the best role for bigs to take in the NBA is changing, and is better described as a power forward than as a center (or small forward). Players need to be able to shoot, they need to be fast enough to cut to the basket, and they need to be big enough to defend multiple positions. Spacing the floor and launching high-efficiency shots is priority number one, and that’s the bailiwick of the four. As the line between fours and fives becomes blurred, fewer players are clearly coming down on the center side of that distinction.
But what about the point guards? What do they have to do with all this? Actually, it’s the same thing. The Rockets have produced a litany of high-quality, low-cost point guards seemingly out of thin air in the past several years. Aaron Brooks, Kyle Lowry, Patrick Beverley, Goran Dragic and Jeremy Lin are all of a type. Even Ish Smith looked like a viable NBA player in Houston. Morey has favored the point and the power forward for years now, and for similar reasons. Smaller players increasingly need to play in a style that is closer to a point guard than anything else. Having a player who can shoot and create for himself is good. Having a player who can do that and create for others is great. Teams increasingly run multiple point guards at a time, like Phoenix, and it’s working. James Harden is probably the best 2 guard in the NBA, and he plays like a 1 guard half the time. That’s important.
The Rockets seemed to have been aware of this growing tendency for years, now. The advent of stats-based NBA play, of “Moreyball” is about more than just salary, and it’s about more than just shooting three pointers. It’s also about positional fluidity and predicting what skills will be useful once the game changes. The game has changed, and the skills of the point guard and the power forward are dominant. Morey always drafts power forwards, and now we know why. He’s just been grabbing the best player available.
