Discover basic basketball center techniques and skills, then meet other famous basketball centers.

Updated for 2020. Discover the skills necessary to be a basketball center and meet some famous basketball centers.

Some of basketball's greatest and most popular athletes have played the center position. Learn about the top 10 centers in basketball history and create your own list of legendary players.

Great basketball centers must be tall, superbly athletic, and durable. This author has chosen the ten best centers of all time including the classics, Wilt Chamberlain, George Mikan, and Bill Russell among them, as well as contemporary superstars like Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon. Other featured players are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dave Cowens, Bob Lanier, David Robinson, and Bill Walton.

Some of the most famous basketball players of all time—from Wilt Chamberlain to Shaquille O’Neal—were centers. Readers discover both the offensive and defensive responsibilities of the center on a basketball team. Accessible text introduces readers to important basketball skills, such as rebounding, boxing out, and blocking shots. The detailed main text is accompanied by fun fact boxes that provide additional information about basketball strategy and famous centers. Full-color photographs of some of the best centers of basketball’s past and present create a reading experience that’s as exciting as it is educational.

Despite being one of the most popular sports worldwide, basketball has received limited research attention compared to other team sports. Establishing a strong evidence base with high-quality and impactful research is essential in enhancing decision-making processes to optimize player performance for basketball professionals. Consequently, the book entitled Improving Performance and Practice in Basketball provides a collection of novel research studies to increase the available evidence on various topics with strong translation to practice in basketball. The book includes work by 40 researchers from 16 institutions or professional organizations from 9 countries. In keeping with notable topics in basketball research, the book contains 2 reviews focused on monitoring strategies to detect player fatigue and considerations for travel in National Basketball Association players. In addition, 8 applied studies are also included in the book, focused on workload monitoring, game-related statistics, and the measurement of physical and skill attributes in basketball players. This book also has a strong focus on increasing the evidence available for female basketball players, who have traditionally been under-represented in the literature. The outcomes generated from this book should provide new insights to inform practice in many areas for professionals working in various roles with basketball teams.