At 25, Dwight Howard is too young to feel ancient.
But the sixth-year center for the Orlando Magic looks around during All-Star Weekend and says he feels his style of play is old-fashioned.
Howard plays around the basket and has no desire to launch 20-foot jumpers. That makes Howard different from a lot of today's big men.
"We're like dinosaurs,"
Howard said. "Shaq (O'Neal) is leaving us, the big T-Rex, he's out, he's leaving us, so all the dinosaurs are gone. Yao Ming? It's like me and Andrew (Bynum) are the only guys left. We need some big men. Where you guys at?"
The days when offenses focused on the man in the middle appear long gone. O'Neal was the last center to win the league scoring title in 2000.
Amar'e Stoudemire is second in the NBA in scoring this season, but he's generally considered out of place when he plays center for the New York Knicks.
The lack of bigs is why the Kings were so excited DeMarcus Cousins slipped to Sacramento with the fifth pick in last June's NBA draft. The Kings' coaching staff sees in Cousins someone with the skills and mind-set to dominate around the basket.
Others see the talent, too, in the 20-year-old Cousins.
"(Cousins is) very talented, and he's the kind of guy who can play inside and out,"
said Atlanta All-Star center Al Horford. "That's an advantage that he's not limiting himself to just playing in the paint."
The 6-foot-10, 245-pound Horford, who played power forward in college, admittedly is more comfortable playing away from the basket in the NBA.
"A lot of guys are facing up now and with the double teams and everything, it makes it harder to play with your back to the basket,"
Horford said.
San Antonio's Tim Duncan will start at center in today's All-Star Game, an acknowledgment that he's a center even though he has been listed as a forward for most of his NBA career.
Duncan was the first pick in the 1997 NBA draft and entered a league dominated by O'Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing and Duncan's teammate, David Robinson.
These days, there isn't the same rite of passage for young centers. Injuries have derailed the career of Portland's Greg Oden. Even for all of Bynum's potential, he has been injured a lot and yet to consistently emerge as a dominant force for the Los Angeles Lakers.
"There were a lot of different kind of centers at the beginning of my career where they were the focal point of offenses, and now they're more rebounders and shot blockers … except for Dwight Howard,"
Duncan said. "I think the game has changed in itself and people are asked to do a lot more if you're going to be a high-caliber player."
The lack of big men who can dominate around the basket might help explain the recent run of NBA champions. From 1999 to 2007, only one champion (Detroit, 2004) didn't have either Duncan or O'Neal.
What Boston lacked in a star center, it made up for with depth at the position to win in 2008. With Bynum healthy in the playoffs the last two years, Pau Gasol was able to showcase his finesse at power forward and help the Lakers win the last two titles.
Boston coach Doc Rivers said he believes dominant big men in the NBA are cyclical.
"It'll be back,"
Rivers said. "The first thing is we need to grow. That's the one position where if you don't grow to be 7 feet tall, you can't be a center where all of us right here can be guards. I think six years ago, maybe seven years ago, we were talking about there were no point guards in the league."
"Now we're talking about it's the point guard renaissance and there are more point guards than there's ever been. And it'll happen again with bigs. It will just take time."
