He’s also the only player to play a full season at every position 1-5.

He played all 5 positions for the Lakers I swear

There were nights he had to bang down there when AD would be on his 800th injury report 

Now he’s going to be a PF 🐺

giannis potentially

he was SG in 2014-15

I could see Lauri Markkanen doing this. Dude is basically a wing right now, could be listed at SG for a team at some point. But as he gets older he will almost certainly become a stretch-5 since he’s around 7-feet tall and will slow down at some point.

He has never played a full season as a C.

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No he didn’t lol. A full season at center?

Just because they played small ball and he was listed at center for some games doesn’t mean he played a full season at center. LMAO what are we doing here.

Boris Diaw legit went from SF to C over the course of his career.

The game has changed a lot when he came into the league in 2003 and what it is now. Centers and especially power forwards has gotten a lot smaller, and point guards have become bigger. Because the positions are becoming more and more meaningless, especially how they map to physical attributes, I expect more people to be in multiple positions as every player melds into a 6-10 player with multiple tools.

Jalen Williams, who would’ve been a shooting guard, has already been a power forward for a full season, at 6-5. Jaden McDaniels looks like someone who should actually be a shooting guard in the 2000s is playing both forwards, and probably some center in the upcoming season because they lost a lot of size this off season.

Power forward is pretty much a dead specialization, and next one to go is going to be point guards. I’m going to guess the center will be the next specialized position to go.

What year did LeBron play a full season at center? And SG? lol so much cap

“Play a whole season at C” is doing a lot of heavy lifting lol

They throw out position eligibility like crazy, it doesn’t mean much

He played 50% of snaps at C, that’s not a full season. He also made All NBA as a F, so clearly the basketball world did not consider him a C.

We just making stuff up now to keep glazing LeDiva?

Giannis is listed at every position except center and is probably a better option there than LeBron

Him being listed at Center ever is just a joke and glaze 😭

LeBron’s season “playing center” was him starting at the 3 or 4 all season and then playing at the 5 whenever Davis went on the bench because they didn’t want to play Dwight heavy minutes, and their only other bench bugs were what’s left of DeAndre Jordan and Wenyen Gabriel

It’s kind of a joke they’re allowed to list him at the 5 for that season, just because the “majority” of his minutes skewed that way. He started at the 3-4, he’s a forward. Even Tim Duncan’s years where he spent a majority of minutes at the 5 listed him at the 4 because that’s where he started.

Josh Hart is certainly next

The disrespect for leaving out Jeremy Sochan 😒

a reminder that basketball-reference’s position estimate, is just that… an estimate. When bbref sees an instance where two players listed at C are playing C, it just guesses which one is the PF and which one is the C without any real reason.

The example that I always give (because that’s when i first noticed it), is when Al Jefferson and Frank Kaminsky used to share the floor together. bbref estimates that Frank played 100% of his minutes at C, and Al Jefferson was a ⁶⁰⁄₄₀ split of C and PF. idk if y’all saw Al Jefferson’s foot speed in 2016, but that man was not playing anything other than center.

A similar thing likely happened to LeBron in 2022, the year they listed him as a center by default. He did play some small ball C, but it was likely not 50% of his total minutes.

Not for an entire season, but Magic Johnson also played center while mostly being a point guard.

He didn’t play center, not really…it was way less than half the season. He was listed at that position but didn’t really play it much, it was mostly AD, Howard & DAJ. I think he asked to be listed at that position for legacy points…

“Listed on Basketball Reference” DOESN’T MAKE IT REALITY.

The lakers had AD and Dwight Howard in 2020-21, no way Lebron actually played center.

Hard to take this seriously when Davis started 40 games that season, Dwight Howard started 27, and DeAndre Jordan started 19. And the total number of games started by Lakers listed at power forward that year was 36.

The only way you get to calling him a center is if you assume there is a center on the floor at all times, so that Lebron counts as playing a lot of minutes at center. But that is a foolish assumption ever since the league went small. The Lakers played small ball a lot that year, meaning they played without a center on the court.

This means nothing in a postionless era

That’s such a fake narrative. Lebron did not play a full season at center, on the block, guarding centers and playing down low, that’s just not true. He played part of a game at the 5 and the media went wild with the story. Basketball Reference is not 100% accurate about those things. ESPN still lists him at forward for that season. Oh look here is a link to a game in that season when they played the warriors. Starting lineup seems to suggest Deandre Jordan played center. I was confused. I was expecting to see Lebron jumping for the tip.

https://youtu.be/PCC9IaewaPw?is=y8CCKhF77sv3NuU_

Reword this. He has never played a full season at center. He also did a few minutes as a center in a small ball league. Get off his snizzuts.

When the fuck was LeBron a shooting guard?

Does it matter? He doesn’t play defense at all. Even Rudy Gobert can DOMINATED HIM🤣🤣🤣

Did PJ Tucker do that?

The game is evolving. With the amount of ball movement on the wings and lack of defense being played positions don’t really matter. The Rockets once played PJ Tucker at C becuase they wanted 5 guys who can shoot on the floor at once.

Lebron at Center is my favorite iteration

Idk if this counts, but Scottie Barnes regularly starts games at pretty much any position. One night he is the starting PG, the next night he is guarding Jokic at C. Its pretty wild to see.

lol

I could see Scottie Barnes doing it. He has SG from his first all-star season (even though he definitely wasn’t a 2) and played centre for most of the year during his rookie season.

Depending on Poeltl’s health and the way BBRef handles him vs CMB he might be able to do it next year.

Giannis. I wonder how many players are listed as the 1-4?

KD has a season as a SG, could definitely see him playing some a center.

I’d suggest your mistake was phrasing it as “played a full season” instead of “listed at” but I think Reddit would still have the exact same reaction to this interesting curiosity even if the title had been more pedantic. Reddit loses its mind about trivia all the time.

Sincerely, thank you for bringing this to my attention OP. I doubt I’ll remember it tomorrow but it was interesting to read right now and for that I thank you.

Feel like Magic basically did similar in an era that wasn’t as positionless. He famously played center and (obviously) point guard. I’m sure depending on the game and lineup you could argue he played the other roles at some point. 

Boris Diaw wasn’t listed properly, but he was a full time combo guard who mostly played 2 when he was a skinny lad.

I thought for sure Boris Diaw would have done this, damn

Wilt Chamberlain played as PG for the Globetrotters before his NBA career (or after only a few yearsNBA)… from what i recall he was frustrated with NCAA changing rules to curb his effectiveness (or NBA …), so went to the Trotters .. when he arrived he told them he wanted to be PG so that fans would see him play in a way they’d never seen before, and it would develop better passing skills etc.

Positions in the NBA have become a technicality at this point.

That’s more an indictment of the organizations he was saddled with than anything.

I don’t know about full seasons, but wasn’t Ben Simmons a PG/C or something like that?

Still got mogged by Jason “The Jet” Terry

In a league where you have power forwards shorter than Kobe that’s not really that impressive. The days of the traditional bigs are gone. Sure you have Embiid and Jokic but even when LeBron was listed at center it ain’t like he was guarding them the whole game. I know the fans wish LeBron had the defensive versatility of prime Rodman but he just simply didn’t.

Listed as and actually playing the position are 2 different things

Bruh, listing him at center is a stretch. Yes he played a lot of small ball center for the Lakers when Westbrook was there. But this is stupid.

Only player in NBA history named LeBron James. Facts.

I think this just raises the even more interesting question of what does it mean to play a position in basketball at this point? There’s more fluidity and overlap between roles than ever before. Basketball isn’t quite positioned yet but it’s getting close.

And old heads will tell you he could survive the physicality.

5’3” Muggsy Bogues could, but no players playing today could.

KD has played SG, SF and PF. He could for sure play center, but alas, has not yet (for an entire season anyway).

Of all the positions SG is the only one I don’t think of LeBron as. Was the position different 20 years ago?

Also led the league in assists when he was listed at pg.

Back in Cleveland on the radio broadcast they’d have the starting lineup say their name, school, and position so you’d have like “Kevin Love, UCLA, Power Forward” and “Kyrie Irving, Duke, Point Guard.”

LeBron would go “LeBron James, st Vincent at Mary HS, ALL positions” lmao

LeBron can play whatever position is left after the 4 other starters choose theirs.

Lakers were so bad at roster construction they forced Bron to play a fucking center, like what are we doing lmao

That Westbrook trade should go down as one of the worst ever. Even now with Luka, the Lakers’ assets are limited and still hangs over the roster construction.