Hardwood Generals: Examining Today’s Point Guard

The NBA season is finally starting, after a long summer’s famine. In celebration, this piece is the first of a five-part series by Alex McVeigh breaking down each position on the floor. Look for the second installment next week.

If you’re like me, John Stockton and Chris Paul spring to mind when you think of a point guard. They’re fantastic players, probably the best their position has ever seen, but that doesn’t really tell us all that much about what exactly a good point guard does.

The point guard, first and foremost, needs to run the offense. After a made basket, the point guard is the one bringing the ball up.

Good coaches will cater their offense to a team’s strength. For example, Steve Nash is a natural runner, so Mike D’Antoni had him bringing the ball up very quickly, to score as quickly as possible—hence the “seven seconds or less” nickname.

D’Antoni’s reasoning was simple: when you have a good offense, more possessions equals more points. With Amare Stoudemire, Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson, Tim Thomas and the like, the Phoenix Suns were much better off with the ball, and though their defense wasn’t great, they could usually outgun people.

On the other hand, take a look at the San Antonio Spurs. Tony Parker is a very quick player, but the Spurs run much more of a halfcourt offense. Tim Duncan, fundamentally sound as he is, doesn’t have the athleticism (or the youth anymore) to run up and down the court. He works better with his back to the basket, breaking down his opponent.

The Spurs are a study in how to effectively run an offense that isn’t flashy but clearly gets the job done, and Tony Parker runs it to perfection.

Is Tim Duncan being guarded one on one? Feed it down low to him.

Is the other team in a man-to-man help defense? Parker can use his speed to get in the paint and draw a defender, which leaves a man open on the perimeter.

The Spurs have always been great about finding shooters who can make that wide-open three, whether its Roger Mason, Jr., Michael Finley or now Richard Jefferson.

Is the other team clogging the lane with a zone defense? The Spurs move the ball around the perimeter well, led by Parker’s keen court vision.

One thing Tony Parker developed last season was a mid-range jumper, which has really made him a threat. Point guards are usually good from three and good at the basket, but a PG with a true midrange game is really something to fear.

With his speed and knack for getting by people, Parker’s very dangerous now that he can also pull up and hit a 15-footer.

The point guard’s primary responsibility, though, is to distribute, which is why teams with shoot-first point guards don’t fare too well. Just ask the Washington Wizards.

Gilbert Arenas is the Wizards’ most versatile scorer, but that means he’s looking to score, not find open teammates. This works against the Wizards in two ways: 1) teams know that he can’t pass to himself, so their attention is focused on him, and 2) since Agent Zero isn’t a proficient passer, he has a hard time finding his teammates.

You almost don’t want your point guard to be that good of a shooter, unless he is mature enough to know that he shouldn’t be the first option. Tony Parker strikes a good balance. Gilbert Arenas? Not so much.

Chris Paul is the best of both worlds: a great passer, and a very talented scorer. He’s got Parker’s ability to get to the hole, and a very keen sense of where the ball needs to be. One can argue that Chris Paul has pretty much made David West a star (an All-Star in fact), since West was a nobody before Paul got going.

Chris Paul is one of the few point guards in the league who can throw the alley-oop and have a center to finish it. Even Tyson Chandler, on his banged-up wheels, was able to flush the dunks down when healthy, and with Emeka Okafor entering the fold, Paul should be able to keep it up.

Paul can also run an offense with the best of them, and he could likely be running any offense in the league to peak efficiency. I think the problem, then, lies in the New Orleans coaching staff. If I were a Hornets fan, I can only imagine what Paul could be doing with a legit perimeter threat (no, Peja doesn’t count anymore).

Point guards like Derek Fisher and Chauncey Billups have made their living by being solid floor leaders. The Denver Nuggets seemed to learn how to play defense when Chauncey Billups arrived. Billups isn’t particularly skilled at any one thing (though he does have a pretty good jumper for a PG), but his leadership seems to infect every team he goes to.

Don’t believe me? Look at the difference in the Pistons and the Nuggets before and after Billups. Hell, the Pistons won a title with Billups, with players who have since been relegated to being mere role players.

When it comes to running an offense, however, Jason Kidd is clearly the best point guard of this decade. Not only did he take teams to the Finals that weren’t Finals teams, but Kidd was able to fill many roles with the New Jersey Nets and now the Dallas Mavericks.

When Kidd was on the Nets, a lot of the time he was the number-one or number-two scoring option. And while he did pretty well in that role, it’s not an ideal fit—because as we know, Kidd is a pure distributor. One of the best the game has ever seen.

His strength lies in his court vision. He sees crazy angles, he knows what teammates are going to do before they do, and he always knows where the pass should be to get his team the best looks.

Since coming to the Mavericks, he’s the third or fourth option offensively—basically just a spot up shooter. And while he has slowed down a little bit, his three-point shooting has been the best of his career.

Jason Kidd brings me to the other part of being a point guard: defense. Time and time again we see point guards like Parker, Paul and Harris torch Kidd for points.

This is where it gets interesting. Point guards are very vulnerable on defense, because their counterparts are usually the quickest player on the floor. Ask any defensive back in football—it’s much harder to go forward than backward. The same concept applies in basketball.

Not only does the offensive player have the advantage when it comes to ease of movement, but that split second of reaction time in the defending point guard can be the difference between a steal and a wide open jumper.

Remember last season’s Bulls-Celtics series? Rajon Rondo and Derrick Rose are two of the best one-on-one defenders at their positions, but they were both blowing by each other pretty easily.

Sure, point guards may be good at steals, but a lot of missed steals turn into easy buckets for the other team, and unless your name is Dwyane Wade you probably don’t take that gamble too often.

Except for on defense, Steve Nash is almost everything you can ask for in a point guard. He’s a leader, he can shoot, he can get to the basket, he can make that pass that almost no one sees. He’s a better shooter than Jason Kidd, but I think his defensive liabilities hurt his team more than Kidd’s lack of a consistent jumper.

I’ll end this with a look to the future: Ricky Rubio. Thanks to complete and utter incompetence on the part of the Minnesota Timberwolves, we will have two wait two or three more years to see him.

But Rubio is the prototype for the perfect point guard. His court vision, even at age 18, is almost unparalleled. It’s almost as if he can see a half second in front of everyone else. His weakness is shooting, but like I said before, that’s not the worst thing in the world.

Remember the Gold Medal Men’s Basketball game in the 2008 Olympics? If you live in America it was on at 3 a.m. Because I’m a nerd, I watched it.

And I saw seventeen-year-old Ricky Rubio, with a hurt wrist, almost lead his team to a huge upset over a clearly better Team USA. That shows me what a good point guard can do. And that’s what you want him to do.

Despite the 1,400 words above you, it all comes down to one thing: A good point guard makes his team better.

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