Satch Sanders, a career Boston Celtic from 1960 to 1973, said: "in the old days, [defenders] would run under you when you were in the air ... trying to take people out of games so they couldn't play. It was an unwritten rule."

Still, by the 1950s and early 1960s some of the NBA's tallest and strongest centers such as Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain had incorporated the