O.J. Mayo: Point Guards Are Born, Not Made

Every frickin’ year leading up to the NBA Draft, I hear about some shooting guard’s prospects as a point guard at the pro level.  Usually it’s because that shooting guard is somehow flawed from an NBA perspective and is ill-suited to play the 2-guard position.

And every frickin’ year when I hear this chatter, I just grumble because it’s an experiment likely doomed to fail.

More than any other position in basketball, the point guard is distinctive.  It’s not just a matter of possessing the requisite skillset.  It goes beyond ballhandling and passing ability. 

Natural-born playmakers possess an uncanny feel for the game, otherworldly court vision, and an inherent desire and instinct to facilitate a team’s offense and involve teammates.

To say that point guards are born, not made—is not truly correct.  But I would argue that the best point guards are not made, they naturally evolve.  Steve Nash, Chris Paul, Jason Kidd, and Magic Johnson are all different, yet they are somehow cut from the same cloth. 

They are driven to share the rock with teammates.  They derive greater pleasure from dropping a dime, then scoring a bucket themselves.

This is a foreign concept to scorers.  Thus, shooting guards are cut from a different mold and they operate with a different mentality.

So when people, even NBA executives, start dabbling with the notion that a guy who hasn’t played the point since he was the primary ballhandler in middle school or early high school—this simply because he was the best player on his team—will suddenly and miraculously transition to the point as a pro is ludicrous and downright stupid.

When hospitals evaluate medical school graduates and seek to fill a brain surgeon vacancy, do they consider heart specialists because they also have a steady hand and deal with a major organ?

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