In the NBA, there's a endless amount of great guards and forwards playing the game right now. Yet the big men that get the dirty work done seem to be extinct. Are there any legitimate elite centers in the NBA besides Dwight Howard? Not many others. To me centers always sort of defined the game of basketball. Tall and big slam-dunkers who could get down and dirty. These centers I'm about to list off are all high-profile ballers. Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Patrick Ewing, and Shaquille O'Neal. Everyone knows these guys. My only possible theory as to why centers are waning is because of injuries. The past couple years we've seen players like Yao Ming, Greg Oden, Andrew Bynum. and Jermaine O'Neal constantly staying off-court or just have been shut down because of this. Some viewers find centers boring and unappealing, but I get a pure kick out of them working their butt off.