With a 100-91 victory over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 2, the Golden State Warriors remained undefeated (8-0) against the spread in the playoffs. They’ve been underrated by everyone -- fans, media and the oddsmakers -- because they aren’t the same team that went 47-35 in the regular season. Without David Lee, they’ve completely changed their identity, going from playing two traditional big men to spreading the floor with four perimeter players. Lee’s absence has also magnified the importance of Andrew Bogut, who has been an essential part of their postseason success after playing in only 32 regular season games.

Over the last two weeks, Bogut has been as healthy as he’s been in years. As a result, he’s started to show the form that made him the No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 draft, selected ahead of Chris Paul and Deron Williams. At 7’0, 260 with a 7’3 wingspan, Bogut is one of the biggest and most physical players in the NBA. Just as important, he has a great feel for the game for a player his size. Bogut is one of the rare centers who can be a difference maker on both sides of the ball. If he can stay healthy, he changes the outlook for the Warriors not only for this season, but far into the future.

Recognition has been a longtime coming for Bogut, remaining under the national radar for most of his career. A product of the Australian Institute of Sport, he broke through in the United States as a sophomore at Utah, carrying the Utes to the Sweet 16 while averaging 20 points, 12 rebounds and two assists per game on 62 percent shooting. There was no question he would go pro, just as there was no question the Bucks would draft him when they won the lottery. After playing in relative anonymity in the Mountain West, Bogut was right at home in Milwaukee, one of the smallest markets in the NBA.

Like most big men, he wasn’t close to a finished product at the age of 21. As a rookie, he averaged nine points and seven rebounds per game on a team that snuck into the playoffs as a No. 8 seed. Over the next four seasons, he steadily increased his production as his role with Milwaukee increased. At the age of 25, he was averaging 16 points, 10 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 2.5 blocks a game on 52 percent shooting. A do-everything big man who could command a double team, find the open man and anchor a defense, Bogut was named to the All-NBA Third Team.

That, unfortunately, is when his body began to betray him. He suffered a gruesome injury to his shooting hand and elbow at the end of the 2010 season, keeping him out of the playoffs. A cascade of injuries, most notably a fractured ankle, followed, as he played in only 77 games over the next two seasons. When he was on the court, he was a shadow of himself, with his mobility and shooting range extremely limited. Milwaukee moved on, dealing Bogut to Golden State at the 2012 trade deadline. The Warriors were taking a huge risk, one that looked doomed when Bogut didn’t suit up the rest of the season.

As this season began, Bogut's condition was the known unknown hovering over Golden State. After three years on the sidelines, he looked like the latest game-changing center unable to stay healthy in the modern NBA. He later admitted to considering retirement at various points in his seemingly never-ending rehab process. The Warriors, meanwhile, moved on without him, becoming one of the NBA’s surprise teams by emphasizing a free-flowing uptempo attack. When he was finally cleared medically, his more deliberate style of play was an awkward fit. He had the lowest PER (13.2) of his career.

Lee’s injury in Game 1 of their first round series against the Nuggets changed everything. Rather than trying to replace his team’s only All-Star, Mark Jackson rolled the dice on a four-out system that left the mammoth Australian as the only big man on the floor. All of a sudden, everything clicked. Bogut’s rebounding prowess and defensive savvy made up for Golden State’s lack of size while the increased amount of space on offense made the Warriors perimeter players nearly unguardable, especially coming off screens from a 7’0, 260 center who knew how to push the bounds of legality.

Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson have received the headlines, but Bogut has been just as vital to Golden State’s playoff success. He’s averaging 8 points, 11 rebounds, 2.0 blocks and 2.0 assists on 62.5 percent shooting in only 29 minutes a game. He destroyed Denver’s frontcourt, including a 14 point, 21 rebound performance in Game 6. It’s no coincidence that San Antonio’s most successful stretch in the second round, a 15-0 run at the end of regulation in Game 1, came when Gregg Popovich baited Jackson into going small and taking Bogut out of the game.

As impressive as Bogut’s stats have been, his impact goes far beyond the box score. On defense, he walls off the paint and cleans the glass almost single-handedly, allowing Golden State to get out in transition. No one can shut down Tim Duncan, but Bogut can make him work for his points without a double team, removing a huge portion of the Spurs' offense. On offense, his ability to facilitate from the top of the key gives the Warriors another dimension when their jump-shots aren’t falling. It’s hard to speed up a team that runs offense through a seven-footer from the top of the key, since he can slow the pace and see over any double teams.

When healthy, Bogut is one of the best centers in the NBA. Going small around him has been a best of both worlds scenario for Golden State: all the benefits of a small-ball offense without the downsides that come on the other end of the floor. The results speak for themselves. Despite playing only three of their first eight playoff games at home, Golden State has gone 5-3 against two 57+ win teams, with two of those losses coming on dramatic buzzer-beaters from Andre Miller and Manu Ginobili. That’s how much of an impact a center of Bogut's ability who knows how to play basketball can have on a team.

Going forward, Bogut’s emergence gives the Warriors a tremendous amount of flexibility. If they are committed to Lee, his defensive and playmaking ability would allow them to build a two-post half-court team similar to Memphis and Indiana. If they want to stay with a four-out offense, they can shop Lee and create salary cap room for the summer of 2014. Either way, Bogut, still only 28, is the perfect long-term complement to Curry and Thompson. Big men, if they can stay healthy, age like wine. It’s something every NBA team will at least have to think about when Andrew Bynum (25) and Greg Oden (25) hit the market this summer. 

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The 2012 NBA Finals between the Heat and Thunder were the high-point of a league-wide shift towards floor spacing and away from post play. This season, LeBron James and Kevin Durant have separated themselves even further from their peers, looking poised to wage many more championship bouts over the next decade. Just like Michael Jordan, who never saw a Hall of Fame 7’0 in any of his six NBA Finals appearances, they may be the biggest beneficiaries of a lost generation of big men.

From 2002-2007, four centers were taken No. 1 overall. Six years later, the only one currently playing is coming off major back surgery. Yao Ming and Greg Oden are out of the NBA entirely, no one knows when Andrew Bogut and Andrew Bynum (taken 10th) will be back and Dwight Howard has been a shadow of himself in Los Angeles. Howard was supposed to be the centerpiece of a title contender and one of the faces of the league, not the hobbled captain of a ship that be sinking. Something is happening to the NBA’s best big men and the league needs to figure out what to do about it.

Of course, this is hardly new. NBA history is chock full of big men with careers cut short by injury, from Bill Walton to Ralph Sampson and Sam Bowie. A 6’10+ human being is in the 99th percentile of height, an extreme physiological outlier in every sense. Maintaining proper circulation to the extremities at that size is difficult enough, even before accounting for a brutal year-round playing schedule with preseason, regular season, postseason and international games.

Nor can the injuries be pinpointed to one part of the body. Yao was undone by his feet and ankles. Oden and Bynum combined for at least six major knee surgeries before the age of 25 while Bogut has had numerous seemingly flukish injuries to his elbows, hands, wrists, knees and ankles. In his time with Orlando, Howard earned the “Superman” nickname by being nearly one of the NBA’s true ironmen. When I saw him in Dallas, his back was so stiff it didn’t look like he could bend over and pick a quarter off the ground.

The easy answer to the injury question is the size of modern centers. Like every other position in the NBA, they’ve grown bigger, stronger and faster over the last 50 years. We may have reached the natural end-point in terms of how big someone can be and stay healthy over the course of an 82-game NBA season. Yao was listed at 7’5 310 while both Oden and Bynum checked in at 7’0 285. Even in a game of giants, those three stood out in the crowd. The average center last season was only 6’10, 250.

Yet Shaq, generously listed at 7’1 325, carved out a long and relatively healthy NBA career, not breaking down until he was in his late thirties. How was he able to avoid the debilitating injuries that have plagued his successors? It certainly wasn’t his commitment to physical fitness. Was his decision to recover from injuries “on company time” ultimately a good thing for the companies that employed him? These can’t be academic questions, not when franchises worth hundreds of millions of dollars rest in the balance.

Baseball has a similar dynamic with young pitchers, simultaneously the most valuable and most fragile assets in the sport. The difference is that the MLB has made a proactive attempt to protect their players. Over the last generation, the game has changed dramatically. Complete games have gone from commonplace to practically non-existent while pitch counts have taken over the sport. Last season, the Washington Nationals famously shut down Stephen Strasburg just to avoid the possibility of an injury.

That’s not a scenario you’ll see too often in the NBA, where players are given the majority of the blame for being “injury-prone”. However, you can just as easily say that certain teams are more injury-prone than others. There is as wide a range of competence among the league’s 30 medical staffs as there is among its 30 front offices. The Phoenix Suns are proof of that.

Maybe it’s the warm climate that attracts so many other retirees, because something about Phoenix is a tonic for the NBA’s most injury-prone players. Steve Nash and Grant Hill missed 41 total games in their last four seasons with the Suns. They’ve already missed 61 (!) in their first year in Los Angeles. Here’s how many games Shaq played in his last five seasons: 40, 61, 75, 53, 36. Guess which was his only full season with the Suns. Michael Redd played almost as many games with Phoenix (51) in last year’s lockout-shortened season than he did in his last three (61) with Milwaukee. Jermaine O’Neal has been relatively healthy for them this season. Jermaine O’Neal!

I’m not a doctor and I’ve never stayed at a Holiday Inn Express; I really have no idea what makes the Suns different from everyone else. Here’s one interesting article about their “secrets”. Whatever their methods, the Phoenix medical staff should be like the San Antonio front office, with disciples spreading a proven philosophy far and wide throughout the league. However, accountability for a position that rarely gets much media attention will only happen if the players demand it through free agency.

Bynum and Howard will be unrestricted free agents this summer, while Oden will be looking to make a comeback. In choosing a team, their first priority has to be choosing a franchise with a world-class medical staff. If Phoenix can give those guys a measurably better chance at staying healthy, that’s a pretty big deal. Maybe there’s no answer to the riddle of keeping big men healthy in the modern NBA, but if anyone can crack the code, it’s the Suns. I don’t want to be writing the same article about Andre Drummond, DeMarcus Cousins and Derrick Favors a decade from now.

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As we move forward with “Amnesty 2.0,” we will see the fascinating possibilities that the provision brings even as the number of teams and players left dwindles with time. One fun component of the rule is that we know exactly which players are eligible for it and that number can only decrease over time since the players had to have been under contract with the same team before the new CBA. As such, any trades, extensions, or contract expirations thin out the list.

The other thing to remember is that most of the benefit of using the amnesty provision comes from additional flexibility in terms of the salary cap- the only money savings owners get from using it come from any reduction in luxury tax payments and whatever a “winning” team bids for that player on amnesty waivers.

Atlanta Hawks

Players Eligible for amnesty: Al Horford

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: None

Most likely amnesty decision: Not use it. Since the team traded all of its long-term contracts (except Horford) and potential candidates like Zaza Pachulia’s contracts expire this summer, the only person left for Atlanta to utilize the provision on is Horford. That seems unlikely.

Boston Celtics

Players Eligible for amnesty: Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo, Avery Bradley

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Paul Pierce

Most likely amnesty decision: Not use it. After signing five different players to dollar figures over $5 million for 2013-14 this past offseason, the Celtics took all the incentive out of using the amnesty provision on Pierce in 2013.

Brooklyn Nets- Used amnesty provision on Travis Outlaw (December 15, 2011)

Charlotte Bobcats

Players Eligible for amnesty: Tyrus Thomas

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Tyrus Thomas

Most likely amnesty decision: Tyrus Thomas in 2014. As of now, the Bobcats do not have enough salary on the books to necessitate making an amnesty move this coming summer. As such, the most likely play is to keep Tyrus until the summer of 2014 when Ben Gordon’s contract is cleared from the ledger. As of now, Charlotte only has players on rookie deals and Brendan Haywood getting money then, so it could be the right time to strike.

Chicago Bulls

Players Eligible for amnesty: Carlos Boozer, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Carlos Boozer

Most likely amnesty decision: Carlos Boozer in 2014. The decision has become even clearer now, though the TaJ Gibson extension could push the timeline up a little bit if the Bulls are feeling the pressure financially next summer. However, Boozer’s last year comes the same year that Luol Deng becomes a free agent, so a proactive Bulls team could make some FA/trade noise since they have less money on the books.

Cleveland Cavaliers- Used amnesty provision on Baron Davis (December 14, 2011)

Dallas Mavericks- Used amnesty provision on Brendan Haywood (July 12, 2012)

Denver Nuggets- Used amnesty provision on Chris Andersen (July 17, 2012)

Detroit Pistons

Players Eligible for amnesty: Charlie Villanueva and Greg Monroe

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Charlie Villanueva

Most likely amnesty decision: Charlie Villanueva in 2013. It seemed like a foregone conclusion in 2012 and absolutely has to be done in 2013. I cannot see a tangible benefit to leaving his $8.58 million on the cap for 2013-14.

Golden State Warriors- Used amnesty provision on Charlie Bell (December 11, 2011)

Houston Rockets- Used amnesty provision on Luis Scola (July 13, 2012)

Indiana Pacers- Used amnesty provision on James Posey (December 12, 2011)

Los Angeles Clippers- Used amnesty provision on Ryan Gomes (July 18, 2012)

Los Angeles Lakers

Players Eligible for amnesty: Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Metta World Peace, Steve Blake

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Metta World Peace, Steve Blake

Most likely amnesty decision: Metta World Peace in 2013. Even though the Lakers continue to need a quality small forward in the worst way, shedding the final year of Metta’s onerous deal seems like the best play. The addition of Chris Duhon makes Steve Blake a slightly greater possibility, but he still appears moveable via trade and provides fair value to the team.

Memphis Grizzlies

Players Eligible for amnesty: Zach Randolph, Rudy Gay, Mike Conley

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Zach Randolph (in 2014)

Most likely amnesty decision: Zach Randolph in 2014. Memphis will eventually need to make a decision on what to do with their core. Having Z-Bo, Gay, Conley, and Marc Gasol on the books through 2014-15 likely means that the team has a choice to make in 2014 unless either Randolph or Gay makes it for them by declining their player option. My gut says that new ownership will cut bait on an expensive $16.5 million final year option for Randolph.

Miami Heat

Players Eligible for amnesty: Chris Bosh, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Mike Miller, Udonis Haslem, Joel Anthony

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Joel Anthony, Udonis Haslem

Most likely amnesty decision: Joel Anthony in 2014. The reigning champs did not lose a single player from their amnesty list over the past year thanks to roster stability. Mike Miller’s health could end up making him the pick but Joel Anthony’s $3.8M final season stands out since the Heat do not have a veteran shooter locked up for 2014-15 at this time. Look for one of the two of them to be shed then, though.

Milwaukee Bucks

Players Eligible for amnesty: Drew Gooden and Larry Sanders

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Drew Gooden

Most likely amnesty decision: Drew Gooden in 2013. With Beno Udrih expiring at the end of this season, Drew Gooden’s two remaining years are the only reasonable option left for amnesty purposes. Considering Brandon Jennings will get a major pay raise this summer and the Bucks will need any flexibility they can get whether or not Monta Ellis opts out, look for him to go even though the team stands unlikely to benefit in any way other than cap room.

Minnesota Timberwolves- Used amnesty provision on Darko Milicic (July 12, 2012)

New Orleans Hornets

Players Eligible for amnesty: No one

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: No one

Most likely amnesty decision: Not use it. By trading all three players eligible for the amnesty provision (Emeka Okafor, Trevor Ariza, and Jarrett Jack), the Hornets became the first team to be assured not to use it this time around.

New York Knicks- Used amnesty provision on Chauncey Billups (December 10, 2011)

Oklahoma City Thunder

Players Eligible for amnesty: Kevin Durant, Kendrick Perkins, Thabo Sefolosha, Nick Collison

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: None

Most likely amnesty decision:  Not use it. We will have to see how Sam Presti handles the Kendrick Perkins situation, but my read is that they will not utilize it after either of the next two seasons. Nick Collison would be a slight chance in 2014 if he were not so popular with the team and management.

Orlando Magic- Used amnesty provision on Gilbert Arenas (December 9, 2011)

Philadelphia 76ers- Used amnesty provision on Elton Brand (July 12, 2012)

Phoenix Suns- Used amnesty provision on Josh Childress (July 16, 2012)

Portland Trail Blazers- Used amnesty provision on Brandon Roy (December 15, 2011)

Sacramento Kings

Players Eligible for amnesty: John Salmons, Francisco Garcia, DeMarcus Cousins

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: John Salmons, Francisco Garcia

Most likely amnesty decision: John Salmons in 2013. Since Salmons’s deal is only partially guaranteed ($1M) in 2014-15, the Kings would have some flexibility in the 2013 off-season when Tyreke Evans can be extended and Cousins will be one year away if they cut him loose at that point. Interestingly, that low buyout could also make Garcia the choice if management sees the talent disparity between the two as high enough to warrant the switch.

San Antonio Spurs

Players Eligible for amnesty: Tony Parker and Matt Bonner

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Matt Bonner

Most likely amnesty decision: Not use it. Bonner’s partially guaranteed 2013-14 salary would be a possibility but appears unlikely at best.

Toronto Raptors

Players Eligible for amnesty: Andrea Bargnani, Amir Johnson, Linas Kleiza, Ed Davis

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: Andrea Bargnani, Amir Johnson

Most likely amnesty decision: Not use it. Utilizing amnesty on Bargnani would be too big an admission of defeat for management, though theoretically a change at the top coupled with more bad play could change the equation sufficiently to put Il Mago on the amnesty line.

Utah Jazz

Players Eligible for amnesty:  Derrick Favors

Reasonable candidates for amnesty: None

Most likely amnesty decision: Not use it. With only young buck Derrick Favors left as eligible to be amnestied, every conceivable sign points to the Jazz joining the Hornets in August 2013 as teams guaranteed not to use the provision.

Washington Wizards- Used amnesty provision on Andray Blatche (July 17, 2012)