As Shaquille O’Neal likes to tell it, he’s responsible for the NBA no longer being a league littered with back-to-basket big men. To O’Neal, he made that type player extinct by dominating his contemporaries.
The reasoning can be debated but there is no denying players of O’Neal’s elk and skill set are now few and far between. DeMarcus Cousins, Joel Embiid and Karl-Anthony Town have in some sense revived the traditional center but they too have games predicated on perimeter success.
Not that it makes them any less of a player. Today’s NBA requires big men to be versatile enough to not only space the floor but also guard multiple positions.