STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now, let's go to the basketball court. For a time in the NBA, it looked like the era of the big, slow, dominant center was over. Quicker, smaller players, like Golden State's Steph Curry, who's merely 6-foot-3-inches, were ruling the court, sinking shot after shot from outside the three-point line. But commentator Kevin Blackistone says take another look because the big men are back.
KEVIN BLACKISTONE, BYLINE: A decade ago, a study in the Journal of Economic Issues showed how nature's short supply of really, really tall people hurt the competitive balance of the NBA. It sort of underscored why only four teams won 12 of the last 18 NBA titles. A big man - Tim Duncan for the Spurs, Shaquille O'Neal for the Lakers and heat, Kevin Garnett for the Celtics - starred for almost all of those championship teams.
The researchers pointed out that big men like them - athletes 6'10" and taller - represented about 30 percent of the league's players, yet 98 percent of young adult males are 6'3" or smaller, which means finding the really, really tall athletically adept person coveted by the NBA isn't easy, which makes what we're witnessing this season in the NBA something to marvel.
Seems like you can't swing a patented Kareem Abdul-Jabbar skyhook without hitting a talented big man. Statistics point to New Orleans' 6'11" fourth-year center Anthony Davis as the league's most efficient if not best player, typical of today's emergent, dominant big man. He scores 30 points for game - second best in the league - but not just by towering over smaller players close to the basket like big men of yesteryear or bullying would-be opponents like Shaq.
Half of Davis's shots have been coming from at least 10 feet beyond the basket. That's the midrange, where the little guys thrive. There's also Boogie Cousins in Sacramento, who is scoring 28 per game. Despite standing 6'11" and weighing 270 pounds, he's shot and made more long distance three-point attempts than a lot of guards.
The nimbleness of Cousins and Davis led them to be selected last February for the NBA's All-Star Skills Challenge, an agility course of dribbling, passing and shooting reserved since its inception for much smaller guys. Neither Cousins nor Davis won, however. No, it was Minnesota's 7-foot Carl Anthony Towns who beat them and every smaller guy.
Towns, like Cousins and Davis, played college ball for John Calipari at Kentucky. Coach Cal calls them the brotherhood, but Calipari isn't the only coach to groom one of the uber-talented new bigs, as they call them. There is Philadelphia's 7-foot center Joel Embiid and 7'3" forward Kristaps Porzingis with the Knicks.
And here's the good news - there are more, too, and plenty to come. The latest Statistical Abstract of the United States shows our population gradually growing taller, and the pool of taller players is getting deeper with more foreign players. So the lean days of talented big men could be getting, well, shorter.
INSKEEP: Kevin Blackistone, who is a big man in sports commentary. He's a columnist for The Washington Post and teaches journalism at the University of Maryland. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.