By Aris Barkas/ barkas@Eurohoops.net
Pace and space, shoot the three, run in transition. Basketball has been changing and guards seem more dominant than ever in the game. Or maybe not?
Before you realize it, every stereotype can change, and this might be the case early in the 2018-19 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague season. If guards dictated the game and piled up the stats for the past few seasons, even if the current sample is small, big men are finally taking their revenge.
Only three guards are among the top 12 players in performance index rating (PIR) through six rounds, with Alexey Shved being on the top. The bigs are back with a bang, as you can see in our first graph, courtesy of Statathlon which provided the analysis for this project.
2018-19 Season, Top 12 Players in average Index Rating
- Only 3 of the top 12 players on average (PIR) this season are guards.
- Furthermore, over the last three games, that trio – Shved, Nando De Colo, and Mike James – have been performing below their season averages.
- Meanwhile, four big men average at least 19 PIR per game already, something that just two other big men (Ioannis Bourousis and Ekpe Udoh) have achieved during the last three seasons.
So why does everyone believe that guards have the upper hand in the game? One simple explanation is that guard skills, like outside shooting and passing, are also things that any quality big is expected to have at least to some extent.
On the other hand, especially during the past two seasons, EuroLeague guards were playing much better compared to EuroLeague bigs.
Distribution of Guards and Big Men in Top 12 List by Season (Index Rating)
- Between 2016 and 2018, only two big men (Udoh and Tornike Shengelia) were ranked in the top five in PIR at the end of each season. This season, Shved is followed by four centers.
- Over each of the last two seasons, the top 12 list at season’s end consisted of 5 big men and 7 perimeter players.
- This season, eight out of the nine big men ranked in the top 12 so far this year are performing above their career averages.
The trend is obvious, and the numbers are quite clear. What’s even more interesting is that among the current top 12, the bigs who are making the difference are not undersized centers or power forwards, whom we define as standing 2.04 meters or shorter.
The “giants” who are taller than that have emerged now on many teams. And as they say, you simply can’t teach height.