Five power forwards to watch for the 2016-17 NBA season

With the NBA season set to start in just a few weeks, we're breaking down the most interesting players to watch at every position. Here, we take a look at the power forwards who will move the needle during the 2016-17 season.

Blake Griffin, 21.4 PPG | 8.4 RPG | 4.9 APG | 50.4 eFG% | 3.8 WS | 22.1 PER (35 games)
The Clippers can be the second best team in the Western Conference this season if Blake Griffin is healthy. Last year, with Griffin only playing 35 games, the Clippers slid in the standings and finished fourth in the Western Conference and suffered a first-round upset to the Portland Trail Blazers. The core of the team has returned. Chris Paul is still an elite point guard, J.J. Reddick is a capable two-way player and DeAndre Jordan continues to be the most underappreciated center in the league. While small forward continues to be a glaring hole in the roster, Brice Johnson could find his way into the rotation if Wes Johnson continues to disappoint.

To tie everything together, Griffin is going to have to return to the guy who was a viable MVP candidate in the 2014 season. With Chris Paul injured, Griffin raised his level of play and averaged 27, eight and four over a long 18-game stretch. Because of Griffin’s play, the Clippers still went 12-6 without their All-NBA point guard and gave the team the confidence it could compete with anyone once fully healthy. Griffin is one of the most unique power forwards in an era that could be defined by the resurgence of bigs impacting the game in huge ways. These new bigs aren’t like those of yesteryear, but their impact could be just as meaningful, especially if Griffin stays on the floor.

Karl-Anthony Towns, 18.3 PPG | 10.5 RPG | 2.0 APG | 55.5 eFG% | 8.3 WS | 22.5 PER
Karl-Anthony Towns has only played a single season in the NBA, and I’m already struggling to find things that the young power forward can’t do. He has gorgeous footwork when operating in the post, the vision of a veteran and the ability to stretch defenses beyond the perimeter. On the other end of the floor, he finished the year 10th in blocked shots and is a vocal defender, directing the rest of his teammates where screens are coming from as plays develop like a prime Kevin Garnett.

Now with Garnett gone, Towns becomes the de facto face of the franchise, even with Andrew Wiggins there. While Wiggins is an excellent talent on his own, his game is built on pure athleticism while Towns can already lay claim to one of the 10 to 15 best players in the NBA and will shoot up those ranks with another season under his belt. Without trying to be too dramatic, Towns is going to be an all-time great. His game has Hall of Fame career written all over it, but he’s still becoming a complete player. Year two should be a huge jump, and watching him take that next giant leap for Minnesota will be a joy to watch.

Serge Ibaka,  12.6 PPG | 6.8 RPG | 0.8 APG | 51.3 eFG% | 5.5 WS | 13.9 PER
Serge Ibaka had quietly been regressing on both sides of the ball for the last two seasons, and there had been a subsequent decline in his role because of it. Both Steven Adams and Enes Kanter fit in more with what the Thunder was trying to accomplish on either end of the floor, and Ibaka couldn’t match their willingness to obliterate the offensive glass or their defensive intensity. For as good as he was at his peak with the Thunder, he never really developed an on-court identity, and it’s possible that he could never become himself because Oklahoma City as an organization was too busy trying to heighten the collective identity of the Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook duo.

For Kanter and Adams, this was fine as their off-court personalities allowed them the autonomy that Ibaka never had. Now, without the shadow of two of the league’s best five players, Ibaka is free to be whomever it is he wants to be or whomever it is he’s supposed to be. Either way, we’ll have a better idea if his regression was a trend or a temporary slide because of his ostensible inability to grow in his position. He never felt like he belonged to such a strange ecosystem. But now he’s removed and playing alongside a team that’s not just developing, but counting on his production for its growth. This could be everything Ibaka ever wanted, or he could crumble under the pressure of heightened responsibility. This might be a career-defining season for Ibaka, and we should pay attention to see how things pan out.

Anthony Davis, 24.3 PPG | 10.3 RPG | 1.9 APG | 50.8 eFG% | 7.2 WS | 25.0 PER
Anthony Davis doesn’t deserve anything that’s happened in his career thus far. He deserves better than the New Orleans Pelicans. He deserves a body that will allow him to compete for a full season. After four years, Davis hasn’t played 70 games and has only made the postseason once, getting swept by the Warriors in four games.

These Pelicans could be the team he deserves, though. Or, at the very least, could become that team as the supporting cast grows with Davis. With Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson gone, the new roster has much more flexibility than any previous iteration that Davis has played with, and with Terrance Jones and Solomon Hill set to join the frontcourt rotation, we could see a lot of small ball lineups with Davis playing center, too. Mike Budenholzer’s free-flowing offense will keep defenses guessing and give Davis new ways to utilize his expansive skill set. Davis didn’t take to the NBA as quickly as Karl-Anthony Towns, but he’s every bit as good on either side of the floor and is becoming the archetype for a future generation of ballplayers.

Dirk Nowitzki,  18.3 PPG | 6.5 RPG | 1.8 APG | 50.4 eFG% | 6.8 WS | 19.0 PER
Kobe Bryant. Tim Duncan. Kevin Garnett. All gone . Dirk Nowitzki still has a bit of life in his legs, but his exit from the NBA has never felt more imminent. And yet, Nowitzki is the greatest international scorer in NBA history, and at some point this upcoming season, Nowitzki could find himself at No. 5 on the all-time scoring list by passing Wilt Chamberlain. He’s going to have to average 24 points per night to get to Wilt this season, but he’s guaranteed to get to 30,000 points this year, and it might be the quietest 30K we’ve ever seen.

With Bryant gone, no active player has scored more points over the course of his career than Nowitzki. LeBron James is a distant second, nearly 3,000 points behind the German power forward. And this is pretty much all you need to watch Dirk for the season, especially knowing that he only has a few years left to give us. He’s going to keep racking up points, he’s going to eclipse 30K and if he can score like he did in his early 30s, he just might pass Chamberlain.