“If the biggest player won, the elephant would be the king of the jungle”: Lakers’ Montrezl Harrell turns into Big Aristotle while describing his confidence in going up against big men

Lakers center Montrezl Harrell says that he doesn’t pay much attention to the height difference between him and the opposing team’s center. 

With the Los Angeles Lakers losing Anthony Davis to a right calf strain, Montrezl Harrell will see more playing for the purple and gold in the coming weeks. The reigning Sixth Man of the Year made his way to the LakeShow after leaving their in-city rivals, the Los Angeles Clippers. 

Harrell has been playing well for the Lakers, averaging 13.3 points and 6.3 rebounds per game all while shooting an efficient 64.4% from the field. Harrell is definitely the ‘spark plug’ type of player that teams bring off the bench to drop a quick 15 or so points. 

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Montrezl is also a decent defender both on post-ups and when he has a smaller guard on the perimeter. Harrell’s 6’7 stature allows him to keep up with players such as Kemba Walker and Terry Rozier. 

Montrezl Harrell doesn’t believe height makes all too much of a difference against bigger centers

When asked about how it feels to guard centers who have a significant height advantage over him like Karl-Anthony Towns, Harrell didn’t hesitate in letting the reporter know that it didn’t really matter to him. 

“I don’t really believe in that smaller stuff man, because at the end of the day, if you believed that, the elephant would be the king of the jungle.” 

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Montrezl Harrell is a great modern-day big man. He’s always one to hustle and bring that extra oomph on each play. Although only 6’8″, Harrell has a wingspan of over 7′, which allows him to prevent big men from putting the ball on the floor.

The league is trending towards having small-ball lineups out there on the court. A perfect example of small-ball centers being utilized on the big stage would be the Rockets-OKC series from last year.

The Rockets put 6’5 PJ Tucker at the center position and to counteract this, the Thunder placed 6’4 Lu Dort in the same spot. If OKC had rolled with Steven Adams at the center for long stretches at a time, they wouldn’t have made it to a Game 7.