I love point guards. I have an unabashed fascination with point guard play. Maybe it is because I grew up in L.A. in the 80’s and had a chance to see NBA basketball orchestrated by Magic Johnson on a consistent basis. The way he could manipulate a defense was astounding. I suppose that is the reason he went to 9 NBA Finals and won 5 NBA championships. Well, that and playing with guys like James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Needless to say, this love of exciting point guard play has me basking in the glow of the NBA right now. Young guys like Rondo, Westbrook, and Rose are so fun to watch and older guys like Nash continue to amaze. And then there are established, in-their-prime guys like Deron Williams and Chris Paul that are playing the position so freakishly well. Personally, I think these guys are the top six at the position. Discussing who is the best point guard in the game today is a fun, impossible-to-figure-out conversation. So, why not have it right here?
It is really hard to compare the games of these six guys because they are all asked to do different things. For example, Rondo doesn’t really have to worry about scoring because he is on such a well rounded team (it must be nice to have three first ballot Hall-of-Famers to play with). On the other hand, Rose has to score because his team is pretty thin offensively (ever watch Noah and Brewer shoot?).
For the record, I think all of these guys are fantastic. To me, the two that seemingly h
ave the biggest weaknesses are Nash (he hasn’t played defense since 1983) and Rondo (my sister has a jumper that is about as consistent as his and my mom shoots free throws better). And Westbrook and Rose are in their third and fourth seasons, respectively, and seem to have a little way to go before they reach their full potential. Williams and CP3 are both well-rounded players that don’t have many weaknesses.
So how do you have this discussion? It has to revolve around efficiency. We have all heard the cliché that the point guard is the quarterback of a basketball team, right? Well, the best quarterbacks have high completion percentages, avoid taking sacks or wasting plays, and throw a lot more touchdowns than they do interceptions. The point guard position is similar, hence the cliché. You want a guy who is effective when he shoots, does not turn the ball over much, and gets the ball back for your team. It is important to remember that basketball is a game of possessions and there are a finite number in the course of 48 minutes. The more you can make out of those possessions (i.e. a made shot or assist versus a turnover) the better you and your team will be.
When it co
mes to effective shooting Nash, Williams and CP3 are better all round shooters (Field Goal, 3 Point, and Free Throw Percentages) than Rose, Rondo, and Westbrook, although Rose has closed the gap a little this year. Nash is one of the best shooters in the history of the NBA. He has shot 50% from the field, 40% from 3, and shot 90% from the line four times in his career. That is a feat that has been done a handful of times in NBA history and he has done it four times! This season, his shooting is down, but he deserves the credit of being fantastically efficient. Although Williams does score more, CP3 is more efficient than Williams in all three categories and has been for their respective careers. In fact, so far this year CP3 is the most efficient shooter out of the six of these players, including Nash.
Defensively, Nash takes a backseat to the rest of the competition. Again, Nash and defense are not friends. (And, no, it is not because he is small and white. For his career Nash has averaged a paltry 0.8 steals per game and has made a grand total of zero All Defensive teams. John Stockton averaged 2.2 steal
s per game for his career and made five All Defensive teams. So there.) For their careers, Paul is the only player of these six that averages more than two steals per game. This season Westbrook, Rose, and Rondo are all averaging over two steals per game, while CP3 is averaging a staggering 3.17 steals per game so far (0.8 steals more than Rondo who is in second). As a reminder, this is significant because of the finite number of possessions in a game. CP3 is getting his team more possessions than anyone else via steals. Finally, Rondo and Paul are the only two of these six players that have made an All Defensive team. They have both been selected twice.
(Side note: Even though point guards are not normally expected to get rebounds, it is another way to get your team extra possessions. This may be one of the reasons Magic and Jason Kidd experienced so much team success. Westbrook is the only player out of these six that has a higher career rebound per game average than CP3. Westbrook’s average is 4.9 rpg and CP3’s is 4.7 rpg.)
Lastly and maybe most importantly, point guards are supposed to get the ball to their teammates. All six of these players are good at distributing the ball (they’re all currently averaging over 8 apg), but because of the rule of efficiency, it is important to do this without turning the ball over a lot. If you are constantly giving the ball to the other team, that really hurts. For all the good Westbrook does, he turns the ball over more than four times per game. This means that he is averaging 2.11 assists or positive passes to his 1 turnover or bad pass. In this category, CP3 is the runaway winner. He leads all six players for both career and season assist-to-turnover ratio. In fact, he is the only player of these six that is averaging less than three turnovers per game this season.
All of these players are fantastic in their own right, but CP3 seems to be in another le
ague. He shoots at a higher percentage, gets the ball through steals and rebounds, and doesn’t turn the ball over very often better than the rest of these players. He is wildly efficient. Currently, there are 15 of the 30 NBA teams that having a positive point differential. The average point differential for these 15 teams is 4.45 points. That means the winning teams in the NBA are winning their games by an average of two possessions. If you have a player that treats each possession like it may win or lose the game, you have a keeper and no point guard in the NBA does that better today than Chris Paul.
Strong post. I agree with a lot of what you wrote. There are two things you forgot about though... esp. if you want to carry the QB analogy further: injuries and winning.
ReplyDeleteInjuries: How much time has CP3 missed just in the last 2 seasons? Over the course of their careers? It's a pretty staggering difference. CP has missed 65 games in his career compared to only 24 for DWill. And CP has never played all 82 games while DWill has done it twice. The other thing to consider is the outlook going forward. CP is playing with a knee brace the size of Earl Boykins. He said it's not a permanent issue but the size of that thing makes me think it's more than just a bruise that will be gone in a month... DWill is built like a strong safety and looks like he won't have the nagging injuries that have already plagued Chris Paul.
Winning: Fairly or not QBs and PGs are judged on the success of their teams. There are two parts of this argument as I see it: overall team success and head to head success. While neither has been to the Finals, comparatively the Jazz have the edge. They haven't missed the playoffs since DWill's rookie year, have never posted a losing record, won their division twice been 2nd twice and were third the other year, and have been to the conference semi's twice and finals once. (Darn your Lakers Lish for knocking them out the last 3 years) The Hornets have only posted two winning records, have only made the playoffs twice, getting to the second round once, won their division once and finished 4th or 5th the other 4 years. We could also talk about how DWill took his team to the Sweet 16 twice and the National Championship once while Paul only got to the Sweet 16 once but we'll focus on the NBA.
Head to head DWill has the advantage as well. He has won 13 and only lost 4. CP has missed 2 games that the Jazz also won. I didn't go through every box score (I am in the middle of finals after all) but it seemed like DWill had the advantage in Points and Rebounds, pretty similar in assists with CP having the steals advantage.
Now this is all to say that I think pure talent and ability, Chris Paul is the better player. But if I'm starting a franchise I want a player who is going to win and play more than an average of 61 games a year. I'm picking Deron Williams.
We're only 5 years into their careers so there's a lot more to be written in this story. The winning aspect could change a lot if CP gets drafted onto the next superteam next offseason. Their next chapter gets written tomorrow... Gotta love the NBA.
I am not going to get in the habit of commenting on comments, but I love John too much to have him walking around blinded by his fanatic feelings for the (stinky) Jazz.
ReplyDeleteI will give you the injuries thing. The knee brace CP3 is wearing is scary. I'm not a Hornets fan, but it makes me nervous because I enjoy watching him so much. Williams seems to be much more durable so far. Point taken and earned.
As for the head-to-head match-ups, blah. Gerald Wilkins seemed to give Jordan fits, but we know who was better. Reuben Patterson was called the "Kobe Stopper", but that was a joke too. A more apt example may be the way Nate Thurmond (a HOF player) played against Kareem. In fact, Kareem said Thurmond was the hardest player for him to go against. But again, we all know that Kareem was better. Some players/teams are bad match-ups for other players (i.e. Warriors vs. Mavs in 2007).
Also, regular season match-ups can be bad indicators of how good a team or players is. Who was injured/played poorly on their team, was it a game during a long road trip, does the game matter to one team and not the other, was it part of a back-to-back, or the 4th game in 6 days? Because of all of these factors, it can be tough to draw strong conclusions from those isolated game results. However, Williams has played well against CP3 for 5 years, so it may not be all that isolated. And that brings me back to the head-to-head match-up thing again (see above).
Lastly, winning is the whole point. And point guards may get the credit for wins, but teammates play a huge role and coaches do too. I do not think it is a controversial statement to say Williams has had superior teammates (3 All-Stars to CP3's 2 (this does not include Milsap or Jefferson who are right there); and much, much better bench players over the years) and a far, FAR superior coaching situation. Not to mention he didn't have to play an entire year as essentially a road team (Oklahoma City after Katrina) like CP3.
In fact, hoopdata.com provides a statistical formula for determining a players contribution to winning (they have an adjusted win score that doesn't skew so heavily towards big men). You can look up the formula because it is long and complicated. CP3 is the highest rated point guard by a wide margin in win score and (not by as wide a margin, but still a good one) in adjusted win score.
So Williams can have the edge in durability and in head-to-heads (if you want to count that), but not in his affect on his team's winning. CP3 gets that edge too.
As much as I love Deron Williams' game and the fact that he plays or the Jazz...no doubt, the best PG is Chris Paul. D-Will is #2. PG is the hardest position to differentiate yourself from the pack (the world has an endless supply of very good 6' 0" basketball players), but those two have done it.
ReplyDeleteAlso the MJ/Wilkens and Kareem/Thurmond points don't really apply to CP3/D-Will. While Wilkens and Thurmond gave those 2 "fits", they didn't out play them. They merely contained them a bit. The Jazz usually win (not tonight, though neither PG had a very good game), and D-Will usually has better stats. Williams is usually outplaying him rather than just containing him. This is probably just a random result.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Warriors/Mavs jab, Lish. Thanks.
ReplyDelete