Power forward continues to be most misunderstood position in NBA

The NBA’s modern evolution can be most easily seen in power forwards.

We often talk about sports or fields or mediums as being in a transition. In football, it’s the popularity of two high shells to prevent explosive plays that took over the NFL in 2020. In baseball, it’s the slow extension of dugouts, from a rotation of five or six pitchers to a laundry list of specialists getting saved to be in mint condition for the 30 innings a year they are expected to eat. In soccer, it was a formless ability to move wing backs into attacking positions without losing their formation’s stability.

These changes took years – decades in some cases – to come about, but they did eventually lead somewhere. The NBA has seen that change in waves. From the three-point revolution to the switch-and-blitz defenses that are hard to find anywhere before the mid-90s, basketball has had its own identity challenged and shifted just as much as any other sport.

Unfortunately though, basketball is host to what I believe is a stalled conversion, a slow passage that got caught and snagged and now is dragged between currents.

That hazardous stream is the view and roles of the power forward position.

The power forward is arguably the coolest named position. No other position group is a motto for perseverance and self-belief. It’s devastating, then, to realize that power forwards have been struggling with a sense of alienation from the well-laid out expectations that other groups have.

This past era of NBA basketball, built around super-sized playmakers, paradoxically saved a previous rendition of the position: tweeners. This started all the way back with Shawn Marion’s success at 6-foot-7 when the average height at the position was over two inches taller and continued when (arguably) the most notable four of the 2010s was the 6-foot-6 Draymond Green.

But the time of the tweener exists only in theory now. We talk about playing small, pushing not-quite-big-enough forwards to a power forward spot, or playing big and shoving two centers on the court and making half-hearted allusions to the Spurs and their positional labeling of Tim Duncan.

Ultimately, we’ve forgotten the power forward spot as an actual position and instead made it a group of “the other guys”. They’re the other forwards or the other bigs. We have completely lost the definition of the position group. In doing so, we completely lost track of how to evaluate them.

And that brings us to this Finals matchup.

When the Boston Celtics traded for Kristaps Porzingis, they got a player who was drafted as a power forward, traded for as a franchise cornerstone, moved to center, traded for pennies, and then found his best level again on a Washington team that was simply not very good, sometimes while playing next to a traditional center in Daniel Gafford. The Celtics also traded the beloved Marcus Smart and, with him, the last trace of Ime Udoka’s short run as head coach. In a word, they traded who they had been for just under a decade for a forward – a real power forward – that fit their shifting scheme and the team they wanted to be.

Except, that’s not really true. The Celtics had never really stopped playing big, and certainly never abandoned the position. There was a time when the Celtics depended on Al Horford and Daniel Theis on court together. Then, it was Horford and Robert Williams III. Then, Horford left and Williams was the only big man, before a Horford retread led to a continuance of the two-big style and a return to the Finals for the first time since 2010.

It’s also worth noting that Porzingis slots in as the center, not power forward, of a starting lineup that had a net rating of +11.0 in the regular season, per Basketball Reference. It’s also worth noting that that league-leading mark is dwarfed by the massive +16.8 net rating when the team moves Porzingis to the four and replaces Jrue Holiday with Al Horford (albeit in a smaller sample size).

Now, staring down a second Finals appearance in four years, the Celtics are simultaneously exactly the same, led by the pair of third overall picks and old man Horford, and unrecognizably different, with a set of defensive guards set to stall their opponents’ dynamic duo and a coach that replaced the rookie who was hailed as the next great Boston leading man.

Behind all of that though, is the move made for the power forward that has been hidden behind the curtain due to injury. The price paid was so low that it seems baffling to look back on the haul that the Celtics got from Marcus Smart. It was not only Porzingis, but two first-round picks as well. Part of that was because of the pessimism, the contrarianism that comes after a career-best season, but some of it came from the devaluation of the four, from an improper understanding of what exactly Porzingis was.

Opposing the Celtics are a team that has seemingly made their way to the Finals exclusively by buying low on underestimated players, not just our focal fours. Kyrie Irving was acquired for Dorian Finney-Smith and a first-round pick still years away. Derrick Lively was drafted at 12th overall after moving down in the order to discard Davis Bertans’ contract. Grant Williams, the ultimate loser of this championship matchup, was signed to a three-year deal after flaming out as a Celtic.

In that way, even before they found their tone setter at forward in P.J. Washington, the Dallas Mavericks had been swapping around fours in pursuit of a real difference maker. Almost every worthwhile move the Mavs have made in the Luka era has contained a four of some kind.

The Mavs are 33-13 with Washington in the lineup, including the month of March where they went 11-1. Washington was instrumental in the fourth quarter of a Game 6 win against the Thunder, before a quieter conference finals gave way to a strong closeout Game 5.

Whereas the Celtics built their identity around a consistent approach, around tweaks and prods, kicking the tires at the dealership until they found the exact seat stitching they liked, the Mavs have traded up from a used 1999 Saab with exhaust problems to a custom built Subaru that a mechanic would be proud to have put together.

Even looking beyond the two finalists, their runners up in the Minnesota Timberwolves and Indiana Pacers are living a similar story.

The Wolves acquired Rudy Gobert to move franchise stalwart and star Karl-Anthony Towns to power forward, where he flourished leading to the most successful season for the franchise since 2004. General Manager Tim Connelly allocation of Towns to the four, a position he hadn’t played since he was on the court with Willie Cauley-Stein at Kentucky, now defines this Wolves team, and the era to come with Anthony Edwards.

Indiana struggled to match bruising post man Domantas Sabonis with stretch-and-swat big Myles Turner for years, but has reshuffled the deck with Pascal Siakam as a power forward who feeds into their fast-paced offense and gives them a second genuine half-court creator. Siakam responded by leading the Pacers in scoring in the playoffs, including 20 points or more in each of the last five games, most notably in two straight games against the Knicks, to make it out of the second round.

Where does this all leave us? Well, it leaves us where power forwards have been stuck for years. It leaves us in a purgatory of a slow change that is taking too long to lead us anywhere. It leaves us between two teams, built completely differently, but both four games from the title. It leaves us with an inalienable truth of NBA team building: good players are good players.

It also means that there’s no longer a chance to buy low. Sorry, that window has ended. Alexandre Sarr might be the first overall pick. Orlando has predicated their whole rebuild on a set of supersized playmakers – a four man in Paolo Banchero who is an advanced shot creator who leverages the physical gifts of strength and center of gravity to dictate the flow of the game, even if he hasn’t gotten credit for it yet. Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren might be only a few weeks away from welcoming a starting center that will bring them into this fold as well.

Most fascinatingly, it’s worth questioning what this means for a player like Julius Randle, whom Knicks fans are already throwing into the trade machine after a playoff run came up short with Randle nursing a shoulder injury. Even Kyle Kuzma, a power forward who has slowly been molded into fitting the more respected “small forward” label, will likely be on the move this offseason.

What these playoffs have shown, however, is a trend. Every team to make a deep run in these playoffs has had some sort of amorphous power forward, a player that fits the idea of a different position but has been deemed the four. Though undervalued, it has been those players who have taken on the identity of the team like a mantle passed along.

For the most forgotten position group, maybe it’s time we took notice.