Jose Calderon Far from Ideal NBA Point Guard

In today's NBA, point guards who pass first and shoot second are quite a rarity. This may or may not have something to do with the role these skilled players are asked to fill as youngsters. For these guys to win, they have to score in bunches.

Hence, players like Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Chris Paul, and Jose Calderon are indeed special. In a league of players trying to emulate Marbury and Iverson, these guys turn the clock back to the days of Stockton.

Now, here's the catch.

Over their combined 50 years in the league, Calderon, Paul, Nash, Kidd, and Stockton have zero NBA Championships. Kidd, Nash, and Stockton are already Hall-of-Famers. Paul and Calderon are still young, but both have a strong shot at having legendary statistical careers.

The fact is, the importance of point guards is blown out of proportion. This isn't the NCAA and the NBA always has been and always will be a league of giants. It goes without saying that true point guards garner much attention, but more so due to their rarity than their actual importance to an NBA team's overall chances at winning a championship.

Consider the players who've stood in the way of Jason Kidd's two shots at an NBA championship. The New Jersey Nets ran into the LA Lakers in 2002.  Kidd was matched up against Derek Fisher. In 2003, the Nets returned to the NBA Finals, and this time met the San Antonio Spurs. This time, Kidd was matched up against Tony Parker.

In 2003, Kidd was No. 2 in MVP voting behind Tim Duncan. Was Duncan just that much better at being a forward-center than Kidd was at being a point-guard? Or did Duncan simply play the more important position on the floor? Certainly, no one believes that either Parker or Fisher were even close to Kidd's level of talent at the time.

"Size does matter in this league," Van Gundy said of Robinson and Duncan, "particularly in the playoffs. And their size beat our speed and quickness because not only did they affect us on the boards and in the post, but they affected everything else. Every penetration was a difficult, difficult shot because of their shot blocking," said Jeff Van Gundy on the Spurs front-court in the 1999 NBA Finals.

Consider the point guards who have won championships in the past 10 years. Tony Parker and Derek Fisher have won three apiece. Chauncey Billups, Rajon Rondo, Avery Johnson, and Jason Williams each won a championship as well.

A case could be made for Johnson, but he was averaging close to seven assists, and was far from this prototypical "true" point guard who averages anywhere from nine to 11 assists per night like the five guys we're focusing on.

The point of this detour through NBA history was to show a slight error in some proclaiming that Calderon was an example for all point guards to follow—because he's far from it.

It might be a little difficult to accept that sometimes a player's statistics aren't a be-all-end-all measure of their talent, or ability. While this holds true for players who underachieve in bad situations, this remains true when speaking of players who overachieve in very good ones as well.

Numbers suggest that Calderon is a true point guard. It's important to establish the meaning of "true point guard" before the term is used, now that we've at least established some reasons for our obsession using it. 

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