Comparing the Spurs’ ‘Twin Towers’ to the Cavs’ ‘Tower City’
The way basketball is played today, the big men don’t get a lot of shine. But, if you take a look back over the history of basketball, there were decades that were dominated by big men.
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain used their size to bully the competition. At the tail end of the 60’s in 1969, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks, and he was the clear best player in the 1970’s. We can go ahead and skip the 1980’s and early 90’s, as a young man named Michael Jordan from North Carolina, cemented his name among the greatest of all-time during that period. Although, fast-forwarding towards the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Shaquille O’Neal was an absolute force in the league as a center.
In this day and age, however, the big man is no longer the most important player on a team. That role belongs to a wing, or point guard, on most teams. Even still, there have been some great frontcourts that had a lot of success in the NBA.
Just to name a few off the top of my head, I’ll start with Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes of the Washington Bullets, Charles Barkley and Moses Malone of the Philadelphia 76ers, and even Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson of the Houston Rockets. With that being said, there’s still one frontcourt duo I haven’t pointed out yet.
David Robinson and Tim Duncan played on the same San Antonio Spurs team for a total of six seasons. Robinson was a 7-foot-1 center who was drafted in 1989 out of the US Naval Academy. Oddly enough he ended up outgrowing the Navy, being so tall that he could not go to sea.
Robinson had a career scoring average of just over 21 points per game. He also averaged over 10 rebounds per game, and three blocks as well. He was a 10-time All-Star, and he also made 10 All-NBA Defensive teams, and on top of that, he won Defensive Player of the Year in 1992. Despite his excellent play the Spurs were never a really good basketball team. That all changed with one pick in 1998.
With the first pick in the 1997 NBA Draft the Spurs picked Tim Duncan, a forward from Wake Forest. During his rookie season, Duncan and Robinson combined to score over 40 points per game for the Spurs, while also combining to collect almost 21 rebounds per game. But the best statistic between these two is that combined, they blocked over five shots per game. In the eyes of most NBA fans, this duo is the best frontcourt of all-time.
Lucky for the Cleveland Cavaliers, they already have one of the best frontcourts in the NBA in Jarrett Allen and Rookie of the Year favorite Evan Mobley. Both have a body type more like Robinson’s, but they are also both very alike to the former Spurs frontcourt. For the purpose of this article, we’re going to compare the “Twin Towers” (David Robinson and Tim Duncan), and “Tower City” (Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley).
Specifically, we’re going to look at the defensive side of the court the most. Allen and Mobley are getting better everyday on the offensive end, but they just aren’t quite as polished as Robinson and Duncan. So let’s take a look and see if this duo is as good as the Spurs’ famous frontcourt, and if not, can they be?