Spacing does not have to be horizontal

A big man who cannot shoot at all can still stretch a defence, provided he threatens the rim rather than the arc.

The centre stands beneath the basket on the baseline, three feet outside the lane, and does not move for eleven seconds. He has not touched the ball. He has also just made the drive on the other side of the floor easier, and no shooting is involved.

The received wisdom is that a non-shooting big is a spacing problem, a defender given permission to sit in the paint and clog every lane. Often true. But the reason it is true is that the player is standing somewhere useless, not that he cannot shoot. Put him in the dunker spot, on the baseline just outside the lane, with hands ready, and his defender now has a decision that is genuinely bad. Help on the driver and concede a lob at the rim. Stay attached and let the driver arrive unmet.

That is spacing. It runs vertically instead of sideways, and it is created by a threat that resolves in half a second rather than by a threat that resolves from twenty-five feet.

There is a reason this works better now than it did fifteen years ago. Defensive rules give help defenders less room to loiter, and offences move the ball fast enough that a big who catches on the move is finishing before the second rotation arrives. A lob threat is also uniquely punishing because the defender cannot recover from being wrong. A missed closeout on a shooter is three points sometimes. A missed decision under the rim is two points and a foul, most of the time.

So I would stop describing every non-shooting centre as unplayable. Some of them are, because they have no hands, cannot catch a pass above their head, or set screens that a guard could walk through. That is a skill problem. It is not a spacing problem, and the two keep getting confused because the box score does not distinguish them.

The version that actually cannot play is the big who neither shoots nor rolls hard, who catches the ball at the elbow and thinks. Every possession that ends with him holding the ball fifteen feet out is a possession the defence won before it started.

Roll or shoot. Standing still is the only unforgivable option.