Guns a-Blazin’: The Modern Shooting Guard

This is the second (so far) in a series detailing the ins-and-outs of each position on the floor in basketball. Also check out Hardwood Generals: Examining Today’s Point Guard.

A good shooting guard can win games/series/championships almost by themselves. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Clyde Drexler—all of them were part of championship seasons.

A good shooting guard and good center can be the foundation of any championship team, as Kobe and Shaq, Dwyane Wade and Shaq and countless others have taught us. In fact, any discussion of today’s shooting guard has to begin and end with Kobe Bryant.

A shooting guard’s primary duty is namely that, shooting. They need to be the top scorer on their team. Your ideal SG should have a good three-point stroke, and even deadlier jumper, and be able to get to the basket at will.

To say Kobe Bryant is good at all three of those is an understatement. More than that, he has that intangible quality that the best shooting guards have: swagger.

Kobe isn’t necessarily a good three-point shooter—he shoots a little less than 33%. But ask any NBA fan if they want Kobe to shoot a three with the game on the line, and even the haters would have to give him his due.

In fact, Kobe personifies the shooting guard more than almost any player in history, both for good and bad.

While Kobe hits the cold-blooded jumpers, gets into the lane and is the crunch-time go-to guy, he also represents the selfishness that seems to pervade the NBA’s shooting guard corps.

For most of his career with the Lakers, Kobe was a scorer, nothing more. Sure, he could pull down a few rebounds, might dish out assists, but we all know where Kobe’s bread is buttered.

Kobe was also at the forefront of a trend we’re seeing more and more in the NBA, the combo guard. The combo guard is basically a shooting guard that can handle the ball, bringing it upcourt as much as the point guard.

Sometimes a the SG will bring it up because he’s clearly better than the point guard (D-Wade for most of his career), or because the offense runs through him (Kobe, D-Wade, Tracy McGrady for much of his career).

Kobe Bryant represents a perfect arc in playing styles for an SG. While he used to be more of a slasher, the toll of more than 1,000 games has made him much more amenable to the pull-up jumper. Unfortunately for the rest of the NBA, he’s pretty damn good at that as well.

Dwyane Wade, on the other hand, seems headed for disaster. Sure, he’s a dynamic scorer that seems to charge to the rim with no regard for his own body or well being. More often than not, it leads to baskets that seem to defy the laws of physics with a last-second change of direction to get the ball around the defender.

Unfortunately for him, he has taken his fair share of damage from his reckless style of play. It took him almost two seasons to recover from the shoulder injury he suffered in 2006-07, and that was when he was a young man with the Miami Heat. As the miles start to pile up on his legs, it’s going to be harder and harder for him to stay healthy unless his game evolves.

Because Wade isn’t a particularly adept jump shooter, he might find it harder to adapt to a game where his body can’t hold up. Kobe, like Jordan before him, found a way to evolve his game to the physical limitations that come along with the natural course of aging.

I’ve spoken a lot about the offensive requirements of the shooting guard, but there role on defense is almost more interesting, because it changes so much from player to player.

Dwyane Wade, while he racks up the steals more than any guard not named Chris Paul, also isn’t a particularly good on-ball defender. Wade makes a lot of those ultimatum-style plays, where he goes in for the steal, if he succeeds he’s got a wide-open layup. If he misses, it’s his opponent that often has a clear lane to the hoop or an uncontested jumper.

The Charlotte Bobcats’ Raja Bell is the prime example of the shooting guard who is more of a role player than a dominating scorer. He’s a good spot-up shooter, but he’s not very good at driving to the hoop or creating his own shot.

But he also usually draws the assignment of defending the other team’s shooting guard, particularly someone like Kobe, or Tracy McGrady.

It’s interesting to watch, because while someone like Bell or the Houston Rockets’ Shane Battier (sure, he’s technically a small forward, but let’s not pick nits) have clearly defined roles that make their teams better, we’ve seen how many rings they have, and how many rings Kobe and Wade have.

Going back to the offensive side of the game, a good jumper is an essential weapon in any shooting guard’s arsenal. Even Bell and Battier, while not primary scorers, can make that shot.

Ray Allen probably has the best jump shot on the planet right now. I saw an interesting question raised the other day: If you had to pick one player to shoot a three that your life depended on (i.e. miss, you die, make, you live) in an open gym, who would it be?

My pick is Ray Allen. His stroke has the look of someone who has obsessively honed his form into a science through years and years of practice, and that’s exactly what he has done.

He’s carried some truly awful teams much farther than they had any right to be, and with the Boston Celtics he found the perfect combination of pick-and-roll basketball and other offensive threats to space the floor.

Ray Allen coming off of a good screen probably makes coaches all over the league wake up in cold sweats. Th fact that he has that quick release and can get that shot off incredibly fast makes him all the more deadly.

While I love Ray Allen and his skill-set, another great shooting guard (albeit one I hate with the fire of a thousand suns) is Ben Gordon.

I hate Ben Gordon. I hate his game, because he can’t do anything else but shoot. Take a look at some of his games, such as the 42-point performance against the Celtics last playoffs. Forty-two points, one steal, one rebound. That’s it.

I hate the fact that his game is so one-dimensional, yet he turned down multiple contract extensions from the Chicago Bulls.

But what I do love is that he’s now with the Detroit Pistons, and has to split minutes with another shooting guard I’m quite fond of, Richard Hamilton.

Rip is one of the best in the game at creating his own shot, whether it’s coming off the screen, or pulling up in someone’s face to drain the J. He’s not particularly good at getting to the rim, but I’d take a jumper like his anytime.

But like I said at the outset, it all comes back to Kobe. He’s the complete package.

Your ideal SG should be between 6-5 and 6-7, be able to knock down the open jumper, the contested jumper, get to the rim, shoot better than 80% from the line, and better than 30% from behind the arc.

Kobe has all of those qualities, plus the aforementioned swagger that the best SG’s have, the one that make them the guy you give the ball to in crunch time.

I know he doesn’t have the gaudy numbers or rings like MJ, but for the modern shooting guard, Kobe is it. Follow his example, and you’ll do alright in this league. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy road.

As every one since Kobe has found.

Fill your brain with more sports analysis by subscribing to the How To Watch Sports RSS feed.