The NBA centre has been cast as an endangered species more than once over the years. Depending on the season-to-season wax and wane of big-bodied dominance in the NBA lane, there’ve been plenty of moments when the impending death of the traditional pivot has been prophesied.
In a game that’s been dominated by dynamic wing players, in a sport taken over by the three-pointer at the expense of the low post, certainly it’s easy enough to imagine a world where the relatively lumbering seven-footer is no longer a dominant force.
And if you’re a fan of the Raptors, you’ve spent the bulk of the last couple of seasons watching a franchise attempting to convince itself that it certainly wasn’t a force worth the required investment, at least since the departures of championship centre tandem Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka in 2020.