page_title: Center (basketball)
section_title: Centers in women's basketball
hierarchical_section_title: Center (basketball) / Centers in women's basketball
caption_attribution_description: English: Margo Dydek Polski: Małgorzata Dydek
context_page_description: The center, also known as the five, or the big man, is one of the five positions in a basketball game. The center is normally the tallest player on the team, and often has a great deal of strength and body mass as well. In the NBA, the center is usually 6 feet 10 inches or taller. They traditionally have played close to the basket in the low post.
  Centers are valued for their ability to protect their own goal while scoring with high efficiency. In the 1950s and 1960s, George Mikan and Bill Russell were centerpieces of championship dynasties and defined early prototypical centers. With the addition of a three-point field goal for the 1979–80 season, however, NBA basketball gradually became more perimeter-oriented and saw the importance of the center position diminished. A center with the ability to shoot outside from three-point range is known as a stretch five.
context_section_description: In women's basketball, 7'0" (2.13 m) Iuliana Semenova played the center position, helping the Soviet Union women's team win two Olympic Gold medals, in 1976 and 1980, and never losing a game in international competition. Semenova also led her club team, TTT Riga to fifteen European Champion's Cup titles. The 6'8" (2.03 m) Anne Donovan led the Old Dominion University Lady Monarchs to the 1979 Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women championship, and was the first female Naismith College Player of the Year recipient in 1983, before enjoying a successful professional career in Japan and Italy.
  With the formation of the WNBA, Lisa Leslie established herself as the premier center, and the league's most popular player. The first WNBA player to reach the 3,000 point milestone, she led the Los Angeles Sparks to consecutive titles in 2001 and 2002, and holds the distinction of being the first player to dunk in a WNBA game. Other prominent centers in women's basketball include Australian Lauren Jackson of the Seattle Storm and Karl Malone's daughter Cheryl Ford of the Detroit Shock. Jackson can also be considered a forward-center because she is also a very good outside shooter, leading the WNBA in three-point shooting percentage in one season. Rebecca Lobo led the Connecticut Huskies to an NCAA Championship in 1995, but never recovered from a torn ACL and had a disappointing professional career. When at the University of Oklahoma, Courtney Paris was considered the next dominant female center after becoming the only NCAA player, male or female, to score 700 points, grab 500 rebounds and block 100 shots in a single season; however, she had a disappointing WNBA career and was waived before what would have been the start of her second season in 2010.  The tallest center in the WNBA, the late Margo Dydek of Poland, who stood 7'2", is still the league's career leader in blocks per game (2.72) and total blocks (877), solidly ahead of Leslie in that category despite Dydek having played 40 fewer games before retiring. Perhaps the most highly touted center in the women's game in decades, if not in history, is current Phoenix Mercury superstar Brittney Griner.
caption: Margo Dydek
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