See Part 1 First

Section 3: Changes in Playing Styles of NBA Big Men

While value is one part of what has changed with NBA big men, an even bigger and more visible change has been the way that they play in general. Big men spend much more time away from the basket now, setting screens to help out guards and shooting 3’s instead of posting up.

3.1 Post Ups

Post ups are a type of play usually done near the basket and utilized primarily by big men. According to Wikipedia: 

“To “post up” is to establish a position in the low post, the area near the basket below the foul line, usually in order to take advantage of a smaller defender. The offensive player usually faces away from the basket, so that his body can protect the ball from the defender. From this position, options such as spinning or backing down the defender to close in to the basket for better scoring opportunities become available.”

Essentially, posting up is catching the ball with one’s back to the basket and using a move to get a high percentage shot near the rim. The most important factors in posting up are having good technique, being strong, and being tall. Because it generated the most efficient looks at the time, posting up became a highly coveted skill, with many teams running their offenses through their centers and power forwards. 

3.1.1: Posting Up: The Primary Weapon of “Old School” NBA Big Men

Until the NBA’s implementation of the 3-point line in 1979, all baskets counted for 2 points, regardless of where the shot came from. Naturally, since scoring closer to the basket comes at higher efficiency, teams aimed to get as many shot attempts near the basket as possible. The primary method to score became using post ups.

(above) Charles Barkley posts up his opponent

Posting up dominated this early era of basketball, with the best players being those that could post up and guard players on the opposing team which tried to post up, while also being able to rebound. A regular possession for a team would be a ball handler taking the ball up the court, the team passing the ball around, and eventually the ball finding its way into the hands of someone who could post up and hopefully score. Most of the legendary players from this era — Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, and more — were centers, and power forwards essentially served as smaller versions of centers. Often times, teams would put a center in one block and a power forward in the other block, doing whatever they could to feed them the ball.

3.1.2: Modern Day Big Men: Is Posting Up a Lost Art?

Posting up was once the most efficient and most used weapon of NBA big men, but it is now sparsely utilized. Additionally, the efficiency of post ups has dropped significantly. A deeper dive into the numbers reveals some alarming information, and makes it seem that the future of post ups is in jeopardy.

Post Up Frequency

Post ups have declined significantly in the current NBA. In the 2018-19 regular season, teams averaged 5 field goal attempts per game from post ups, accounting for just 5.6% of all NBA shots. In contrast, pull-up shots (shots where a player dribbles, stops, then shoots) accounted for 24.7% or total shots, showing that shot attempts are coming increasing off the dribble and not off of posting up. With a figure this low, one can only assume that teams must not view posting up as a reliable option if they do it so rarely. Looking into the current conversion rates might give insight into why teams are shying away from this formerly routine play-type.

Post Up Efficiency

Of 31 NBA players that posted up at least 100 times during the 2017-18 season (82 games long), only 13 averaged above average points per possession, showing that post ups are no longer an efficient option for most teams, which could be a reason why team don’t like posting up and are turning to other play types.

(above) Efficiency and volume of post ups for the 31 NBA players that posted up at least 100 times during the regular season.

The diagram shows that posting up has become a relatively inefficient option, and even those who post up the most the most are only doing so 2 to 3 times a game, meaning it’s not their primary method to score.

NBA.com classifies play that result in shot attempts into 9 categories, and looking at the efficiency of each of these play-types further shows that post ups are not as valuable as one might think.

(above) Average point per possession in 2017-18 NBA season for each play-type

Of these 9 play types, post up ranked second to last as a whole in the league for points generated per position. Of note, plays where the roll man (big man who set the screen in the pick and roll) took the shot were one of the most efficient types of plays, again providing some reasoning as to why teams opt to use their bigs for screens and not interior scoring.

3.2: Pick and Rolls

In a league that has continued becoming more perimeter-oriented, it has become increasingly more important for big men to be able to contribute when not near the rim. While some have become serviceable 3-point shooters, what has become even more important is being able to set screens and run pick-and-rolls. Instead of scoring off of post-ups, many “modern”, athletic bigs have begun getting a significant portion of their points of off catch alley-oops when cutting to the basket after setting a screen.

NBA teams averaged 21.5 shots per game out of pick-and-roll possessions, and while only 5.7 of these attempts came from the big men setting screens, the figure is still larger than the number of attempts generated out of post ups. Being that big men now have screen setting as their primary role, it becomes clearer that not getting as many touches as they once did has contributed to their decline in overall production.

3.3: Agility vs Physicality

As discussed earlier with big men having to do more rolling to the rim and less posting up, as well as with having to be more mobile, it has become more important for big men to be agile instead of being powerful. This has aided them in becoming more versatile, but it has decreased their ability to simply out-muscle opponents through sheer strength.

While this trend has affected all positions, big men have been hurt the most because they were the ones who took the most advantage of being at higher weights.

3.4: Increased Floor Spacing

Modern big men spend much more time being far away from the basket and even being behind the 3-point line than ever before. This has affected their shooting patterns and their abilities to successfully rebound.

3.4.1: Increased Long-Distance Shooting

While it will be discussed more in later sections, big men have begun shooting a lot of 3’s, and the rise in their attempts has come much later than that for other positions, also coinciding with their decline in posting up. The reasons behind this will be expanded upon, but big men are substituting post ups with 3 pointers, and the data shows that the trend is continuing.

These developments have led to big men spending even more time outside of the paint, and it has been a significant contributor to big men slowly losing their prior identity as being interior presences.

3.4.2: Decreases in Offensive Rebounding

NBA coaches will always be quick to stress that a defensive possession doesn’t end when the offense misses a shot; it ends when the defense gets the rebound. Offensive rebounds are incredibly important to the game as it gives teams a second chance and can sometimes be a game’s deciding factor. Having strong big men who can effectively get rebounds even when on offense is a big advantage, but they need to be close to the basket in order to have an impact. With the increased floor-spacing of big men, there have been fewer opportunities to grab offensive rebounds, and there is a very clear correlation with increases in 3-point attempts and decreases in offensive rebounds.

One of the detrimental effects of this trend on big men is that they are losing out on one of their most valuable attributes, and this gives teams a reason to not emphasize having big, strong big men that can hang out near the basket to rebound. Overall, spreading the floor has many subtle effects that are contributing to the disappearance of “old school” big men.

Comment what you think and check out Part 3.