On Tuesday night, the Houston Rockets started the tallest quintet of players an NBA opening night has ever seen, with three arguably power forward-sized players occupying the nominal backcourt, and the twin mashers of Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams playing under the basket. Across from them stood Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein, the double-big combination most recently seen hoisting the championship trophy. In a timely throwback, the first games broadcast on NBC in 23 years highlighted the fact that a few years after the discovery of the three-pointer revolutionized basketball, being huge is a tactical advantage being deployed by some of the league’s best teams. How did we get here?
While I was watching this jumbo group of dudes bludgeon each other and make space in the half court with bone-rattling screens, I thought about the last time these two teams played a playoff series, six seasons ago. The final Daryl Morey-era Rockets team began the season with Clint Capela at center and ended it with, well, nobody. They traded Capela for the 6-foot-7 Robert Covington, and the team won a playoff series despite fielding zero players that could be thought of as bigs. They did so against a Thunder team whose whole thing was playing three point guards at the same time, and while Adams played a bit for OKC, this was as small as basketball could get. Both teams prioritized taking a million threes, spacing the floor out with quicker players, and rebounding by committee at the expense of traditional big-man duties like rim protection. Why plant someone under the rim if everyone is standing around on the three-point line?
