Okay, so I gotta share what I did the other day. Got into this argument, you know, the usual kind, with my buddy about basketball. We were talking about dominant players, and somehow we landed on centers. He was going on about the old days, the giants in the paint. I was like, man, the game’s different now, especially for the big guys. That whole conversation got me thinking, who really were the top centers in the NBA for the 2023 season? I decided I needed to figure it out for myself, not just rely on hot takes.
Starting the Search
First thing I did was pretty basic, just went online. Fired up the computer and started searching around. Stuff like “best NBA centers 2023”, “top centers stats”, you know the drill. Man, there was a lot out there. Every sports site, blog, and forum had their own list. It was kind of overwhelming, scrolling through pages and pages of opinions and stats.
Saw a ton of names right away. Obviously, two guys were everywhere: Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid. Couldn’t miss ’em. They were basically the whole conversation for MVP for a lot of the year. Their numbers were just wild, like video game stats sometimes. I watched some clips – Jokic doing his magic with passes you wouldn’t expect from a center, and Embiid just scoring like crazy and drawing fouls.
Thinking About What ‘Best’ Means
But just looking at the headlines and points per game felt kinda shallow. I started thinking, what makes a center great today? It’s not just about being tall and blocking shots anymore, though that helps. I jotted down a few things I thought were important:
- Scoring: Yeah, points matter. But can they score inside and out? Create their own shot?
- Rebounding: Still super important. Gotta clean the glass on both ends.
- Defense: Protecting the rim is classic center stuff, but now, can they switch? Can they guard smaller guys sometimes? That seemed huge.
- Playmaking: This feels like the biggest change. Guys passing out of the post, running the offense. Jokic is the prime example, but others do it too.
Thinking about these points made it more interesting than just looking at who scored the most.
Digging a Bit Deeper
So I started looking past just Jokic and Embiid. Domantas Sabonis kept popping up. Different style, more of a bruising rebounder and passer, racking up triple-doubles for the Kings. Then there was Bam Adebayo down in Miami. Maybe his scoring wasn’t on the level of the top two, but his defense? Man, that guy is everywhere on the court, guarding basically anyone. Super valuable, even if it doesn’t always show up huge in the box score.
It got kinda tricky then. How do you weigh Embiid’s scoring dominance against Jokic’s insane playmaking and efficiency? How much does Adebayo’s defensive versatility count? I spent some time actually watching game highlights, not just reading stat sheets. Sometimes you see things in how they move, how they command the defense, or make those little plays that don’t get counted.
My Takeaway
Honestly, after going through all that, I didn’t come away with some definitive, ranked list carved in stone. It wasn’t really about crowning one single guy. What I really got was a better feel for how diverse the center position is now. You’ve got these absolute unicorns like Jokic and Embiid doing things we’ve never seen. Then you have these other guys like Sabonis and Adebayo who are beasts in their own right, impacting the game in massive ways, maybe just differently.
It’s clear the role has changed a lot from the old back-to-the-basket guys my buddy was talking about. They gotta do way more now. So yeah, that was my little project looking into the 2023 centers. Confirmed that Jokic and Embiid are operating on a different level offensively, but also made me appreciate the skills and impact of the other top bigs around the league. It was a fun dive, definitely learned a bit more than just relying on sports talk shows.
