Also, Wilt & Shaq are generational outliers that are not in any indicative of your typical pro athlete. Shaq is a really bad example for the article to use as indicating any short of progress in sports performance. The current NBA isn't filled with Shaq-like players. It's guard dominated with a heavy emphasis on 3 point shooting.
That's a fair point. The current NBA is also incredibly weird and positionless; the current champions have a shooting guard who is slightly taller than their power forward and occasional center and a small forward who is even taller, and there's a generation of young players who are seven feet tall but have the skill set of point guards and wing players. If anyone is the predecessor of this style of player, it would be Kevin Durant, who is the style of lanky seven-footer who has been pushed out of the center position but developed wing skills to compensate.
The decline of the center position is really weird, though. The emphasis on three point shooting is driven by analytics--it turns out almost every player is more efficient shooting threes over midrange shots--so I wonder if a similar conclusion has been reached about the post game.
