The centre's job when nobody on the team can score in the post

A centre who never receives the ball with his back to the basket still touches it on most possessions. His work is screening, finishing and rebounding, in that order, and all three are jobs you can watch him do without the ball ever stopping in his hands.

Screening is the first duty. He plants himself next to the defender guarding the ball, feet wider than his shoulders, arms crossed over his chest or held tight to his body, and absorbs the contact without moving. A screen with a hip swung into the defender at the moment of impact is a foul, and it is the most commonly called offensive foul in the game. A good screener sets the angle first, deciding which way the ball handler will go, then holds still.

After the screen comes the roll, and this is where the scoring arrives. He turns his shoulders toward the basket and runs, keeping his hands up and open. If the pass comes early he catches at the free throw line with defenders scrambling behind him, which is called the short roll, and from there he is a passer rather than a scorer: the defender who came to help has left someone open, and the big man's job is to find him in one motion. If the pass comes late he catches at the rim and finishes off two feet.

Handoffs are the other half of the offensive job. He stands at the elbow or the top of the key, a guard runs at him, and he hands the ball over at the last instant while his body screens the chasing defender. It looks like nothing. It generates the same advantage as a ball screen and it is harder to defend because the timing is set by the guard rather than by the screener.

Defensively he is usually the last line, which means he is playing two men at once for part of every possession. In a drop coverage he sits back near the paint, conceding the mid-range jump shot and refusing to concede the layup, then recovers to his own man. In a switch he ends up guarding a quick guard twenty feet from the basket, and the goal there is not to steal the ball but to slide back toward the paint, keep his hands high and wait for help.

Rebounding on both ends is the part with no glamour and the clearest effect on a result. He is expected to box out first and jump second, which frequently means he does not get the rebound himself: he holds a body while a guard collects it. That shows up nowhere on the stat sheet, which is why watching the box out is more useful than reading the rebound column.