Zach Edey's final game in college hints at what might be to come in the pros
The Canadian big man lost in the NCAA championship final, but continued to show that his old-school game might have a shot at making it in the NBA
I once had a sit-down interview with Dikembe Mutombo in which we discussed the fading impact of the NBA big man.
More accurately, I asked him questions about the fading impact of the NBA big man, and he rejected the notion entirely and politely intimated that I was an idiot.
The four-time Defensive Player of the Year, a classic anchored-to-the-paint seven-footer, insisted that the trend toward three-point shooting — we were speaking in 2017, at the height of Golden State’s bombs-away dominance — was bound to reverse course at some point.
All these teams going small, spreading the floor with shooters and leaving the paint unmolested? Bah. Metaphorical finger-wag. It will flip back, he said. Some team would find success punishing opponents with size down low, and then others would start copying that strategy.
Mutombo’s prediction was right, sort of. The MVP race in recent years has been dominated by Very Large Men in Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo, although none of them are classic back-to-the-basket centres. They all have have different games, but a constant with all of them is versatility. They shoot, they pass, they can be found under the basket but also beyond the three-point line. They have collectively brought back the importance of the NBA big man but also thrown a few shovels of dirt on the idea that the league is just waiting for the next Mark Eaton, someone to stand in the paint, look imposing, and swat layups. The centres of yore, who didn’t so much as move around the court as lumber into a fixed position under the basket like a medieval trebuchet, have yet to make a comeback.
Which brings us to Canada’s own Zach Edey. The 7-foot-4 Purdue giant was the NCAA Player of the Year last season and went back to school at least in part because his NBA prospects were dim. It was a weird anachronism. How could a player be so good at the college level but so lightly regarded as a future professional?
But it was also understandable. Edey was a throwback, a paint-occupying big man who did all of his damage near the rim. You wouldn’t put nimble among his top-five adjectives; he was more like one of the mechanical robot-suits in Pacific Rim. Massive, deadly, but if they got moving in the wrong direction it took awhile to stop and get it going back the other way. His Purdue team, a one-seed in last year’s March Madness tournament, also lost to 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson, which sounds like a character in a novel set in the English countryside but is in fact a college. Purdue’s first-round face plant wouldn’t have helped Edey’s draft prospects.
But all he did in response was lead Purdue back to another one-seed, win a second straight NCAA Player of the Year award, and this time get all the way to the March Madness championship game.
Edey did an admirable impression of a siege cannon in Monday night’s title fight, scoring 37 points to go with 10 rebounds and a pair of blocks, but the rest of his teammates combined for just 23 points. The Connecticut Huskies overwhelmed Purdue in the second half to win 75-60 for their second straight championship.
For much of the first half, Purdue as a whole seemed to embrace Edey’s old-timey approach to the game. They hit only one three-pointer and attempted just two. The ball kept finding Edey in the paint, and he hit jump hooks, finger rolls, and worked Connecticut’s own Very Large Man, seven-footer Donovan Clingan, with drop steps, up-and-unders, and every kind of move that was invented in the sport before guys realized that the game was easier if they just jumped really high. Edey forced both of UConn’s centres into foul trouble, but by the end the Huskies had a big enough lead that they let him score, happy to trade two-point baskets and eat clock.
What remains to be seen is if Edey’s extra seasoning in college, and his clear improvement from year to year, has significantly improved his professional prospects. That is, will a somewhat plodding big man be able to make a career in a league that has largely moved on from somewhat plodding big men?
The league seems to have at least come around to the possibility. Where Edey was expected to be undrafted had he left Purdue after last season, he was considered a likely first-round pick in 2024 before March Madness began last month. Now that he has been dominant through a long tournament run, he is sometimes mentioned as a possible lottery pick. Lord knows that the Toronto Raptors, his hometown team, had their best years with large, somewhat plodding men at the centre spot in Jonas Valanciunas and then Marc Gasol.
But the range of opinions on Edey’s career prospects remains broad. Some look at his college accomplishments and see a potential star. Others see someone who would be a liability against the NBA’s overall speed and versatility.
I’m pretty sure I know which path Dikember Mutombo would pick for him.