Can Danny?

The craziest thing about the small ball revolution is that its founding father, The Phoenix Suns, never REALLY went as small as other teams have been attempting. Shawn Marion was a SF who could handle playing in the paint (ala Lamar Odom or Cliff Robinson) while the athletic, long armed Boris Diaw, turned out to also be an undersized tweener forward rather than a guard. Diaw struggled to break the Hawks rotation as a perimeter and found his niche when moved into the paint. Once Diaw's career took off, everyone mocked the Hawks saying that they didn't see what he had.

However, the fact that everyone seems to ignore is that had everyone known on draft day what they know now about Boris, he probably would have been a second round pick. Tell any scout that a 6'8 athlete doesn't have the game to survive on the perimeter and they will immediately tell you that there is no place for them in the NBA. Take Diaw in the first round and you'd probably be mocked as Isiah was for selecting Renaldo Balkman.

Everyone saw the Suns success and thought they could get away with four guard lineups when in reality what they should have seen is the fact that their definition of what an interior player is needs to be updated. Honest-to-goodness low post moves are scarce today as most big men are now known for their versatility. The operating station for most elite bigs has moved to the high post, a place where most of them aren't able to utilize their size advantage. Despite this, teams haven't updated their opinions on undersized big men. Now more than ever, players like Diaw or David Lee can excel in the NBA. Whereas in the past, an opposing PF's would have taken them down to the post and gone to town, today's big men don't have the skill set to make teams pay for playing smaller bigs.

Unforutunately, this fact has flown over the heads of most NBA GM's. Even Billy Knight, the man who dumped Diaw, hasn't learned as he has been forcing Josh Smith to play the guard position rather than taking advantage of his ability to handle the PF spot. Even worse, his myopia led him to waste a lottery pick on a more traditional power forward. Knight already had a starting forward tandem in Marvin Williams and Smith but his need for a textbook PF drove him to make the worst pick in the draft.

Meanwhile, others GM saw Diaw's success and thought going "small" meant subbing in a shooting guard for a power forward and starting a swingman at the 4. Already two teams, the Warriors and Celtics, have abandoned their initial small ball plans and many more will likely give up on it. Whether or not teams will ever realize the real lesson of Boris Diaw's rise (and not allow talents like Ryan Gomes, Leon Powe, and Chuck Hayes to become late 2nd rounders or go undrafted) remains to be seen.