Funny how the world works. Remember when D12 to the Nets was big news?
Yeah. Back before the era of small-ball and 3-point longball shooting existed.
Dwight was great in the 4 out one in system that SVG ran. He'd have been great in the current style of play as well.
He was undone by his back injury that sapped his athleticism. He's not close to what he was back then. Back then he was a quicker Gobert who was a terror on offense to handle.
You live with all the childish BS when he was all-nba and/or MVP level, now you don't bother.
Yeah, Prime Dwight as I remember him had the ability to do what many of the low-skill physically-dominant centers of today struggle to do -- punish mismatches inside. Dwight didn't have many moves at all down low but he was so strong it didn't matter, he could back down and take one step to the baseline, turn, and dunk over most smaller players.
Compare that to guys like Deandre, Gobert, Capela, Drummond etc who struggle to score efficiently around the basket unless they've got a clear lane rolling to the rim or are finishing an alley-oop.
There's certainly still room in the modern game for a big man that grabs 25% of available rebounds, finishes over 65% within 5 feet of the basket, and can easily go for 25-30 on 70% shooting if the opponent fails to put a pure big man with some size on him in the low post.
Problem is that it's a pretty high bar to clear. Most rim running 5s in today's game are more in the Tyson Chandler mold, i.e. not much of a back to the basket game, struggle to shoot over 50% on post-ups even against much smaller players.
Plus of course, the big men with superstar talent coming into the league now aren't working on their back down game, they're trying to develop guard skills and a faceup game while they're still in college so they can hit outside shots and attack closeouts a la Anthony Davis or Karl Towns. It makes sense to develop those skills.
But I'm kind of hoping that we see a 7 foot, 280 pound physical freak enter the league who can absolutely kill defenders inside. And I don't mean one who likes to rely on fade-aways and step-backs like Joel Embiid. I mean a guy who does what Dwight used to do, i.e. catch, turn and dunk within 3-4 seconds if the guy defending him wasn't an absolute tree.