It is well known that this is the era of small ball in the NBA. Small ball is not just a rhyme, but an attempt at a description of this era – it is the league-wide and increasingly worldwide trend within professional basketball to go away from traditional two big men line-ups and instead often feature only one, if not sometimes none. That said, “small ball” is still something of a misnomer. Or at least, it is if “small” is used to mean “not tall”. More power forwards are playing centre, and more small forwards are playing power forwards, but those position alignments are more about changing styles of play than decreasing size. Those players are still tall. The tall guys just play differently now. “Small ball” is not so much “play three guards” as it is “speed the game up”. The game is sped up in large part by speeding the players up, particularly those who traditionally were slow. If “small” is used as an antonym of “wide”, it becomes more accurate. The game still features seven footers, nearly if not quite as many as before. They just almost all run rather than stand now. Such is a requirement for the increased perimeter play of big men that small ball truly entails.