[USATODAY] Top Center = Boris Diaw

I like Diaw, but one could make an argument that the ranking is upside-down.

Stuart

 

Exactly. Maybe five players in the game have been better than Yao the last month, much less five centers.

 

i didn't know that Chirs Kaman was better than Yao. Or that 3ptrs were as important as rebounds and points.

 

According to this ranking, if some day Oneal averages 70 points and 40 rebounds a game, he is still ranked 8th best center in NBA.

 

Silly garbage.....funny last year they were saying Amare was being hyped like crazy and now Diaw....maybe it has more to do with the system and Nash....

 

LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe this! If you reverse the order the ranking, it's a pretty good ranking. But on the other way around, this just shows how stupid this is. Diaw is good, no question, but you take him over Shaq and Yao as a center, great formula!!!!

 

There are a lot of teams that would love to get "overly excited" about a center who has put up 27-15 over the last 8 games.

 

So has Miami contacted Phoenix about trading Shaq for Diaw?

 

Seeing how Yao is normally a rock in terms of durability (how many games has he missed during his other seasons?).. you can use the writer's own stats to push Yao up the ranking.

Ranking is 111 on durability.. but normally he misses next to no games.. so we assume a ranking of 1. Yao shoots up to 84 in his score, already 3rd best.

And then when you factor in winning % that's f'ed up thanks to injuries...

 

I like this. The only thing taller than Yao's shoulder is Yao's shoulder with a chip on it.

 

I like Diaw, he's a great player and has vastly improved his game. But to dare say he is the best center, that's just stupid. This is why it pisses me off when people over-analyze stats.

 

On top of that, most big men nowadays are chickens. FG% in the paint is higher than behind the 3 pointer line. Players don't know that? Of course they do. Do they prefer "versatile" movement or flexibility of "playing all 5 positions"? That's BS. They are chickens. That's it. NO matter how that so-called new breed of center is hyped, when Yao is dominating, those new breed will just have to double and tripple team him. When Rockets guards knock down shots, and Rockets eventually reach the promise land, they can keep talking about their new breed all they want to.

 

The best center in the entire league is yao. I've been saying this for a while now. no matter what these idotic writers say or write, yao's track-record proves he is a bonafide great player now.

 

Shall we trade our 10th rank center to their top ranked center? Sounds like a good deal to me... May be Phoenix wouldn't do it.

 

Here's an idea: put all the 5's in the L 'rated' above Yao on the open market. Then, put Yao on the open market. The 'hater-raters' get to keep Yao + any 5 who incurs a greater trade package.

End of the day: Rox retain Yao. Not one single center in the world would command a greater offer from other GMs than Yao. None.

 

this is stupid.

 

Baloney. <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/3599">Yao presently has a 21.0 points per game average</a>.

Don't know where this guy gets his stats, but they're obviously wrong.

 

That's the stupidest statistical ranking I've seen in some time, and it demonstrates an astounding lack of basketball knowledge and logic.

Here's a more sensible statistical ranking, based on Hollinger's PER (a per minute, pace-adjusted summary stat). Doesn't incorporate certain aspects very well, particularly defensively:

1 Shaquille O'neal, MIA
2 Yao Ming, HOU
3 Chris Bosh, TOR
4 Tim Duncan, SAS
5 Zydrunas Ilgauskas, CLE
6 Pau Gasol, MEM
7 Mehmet Okur, UTH
8 Alonzo Mourning, MIA
9 Ben Wallace, DET
10 Channing Frye, NYK
11 Brad Miller, SAC
12 Dan Gadzuric, MIL
13 Andrew Bogut, MIL

 

Yao wouldn't officially qualify as a league leader because of all the games he missed.

 

That's a point. However, I maintain this article's author is using some grossly inaccurate stats. If I'm correctly reading the above chart, it's listing Yao as <b>one</b> point per game.

Of course, if PPG in that chart stands for something <i>other</i> than points per game, I sit corrected.

<b>EDIT:</b> It occurs to me that "1" in the chart may be his <i>ranking</i> among centers in points per game... in which case, that's definitely accurate.