The Future of the NBA Point Guard Is Already Here
If you've been watching the NBA in recent years, you might think there's a revolution going on, one that's totally twisting the traditional definition of what a point guard is and should do.
You probably caught at least a glimpse of it if you tuned into the Golden State Warriors' triumph over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2015 NBA Finals. The Cavs went out of their way to slow down Stephen Curry, the league's latest MVP and its most lethal shooter. Cleveland might've snuck away with the city's first championship in over a half-century if not for the loss of Kyrie Irving, a superb scorer, shooter and ball-handler in his own right.
"Kyrie gets into the paint a little bit more and finishes with those funky finishes that he does, the Rod Strickland-type finishes," Los Angeles Clippers guard Jamal Crawford explained to Bleacher Report prior to the Finals.
"And Steph will let it fly, but they both, Steph can go in there and have some crazy finishes, and Kyrie can pull the three off the dribble as well. They both can do it off the dribble, and that’s what makes them both unstoppable."
These two stars sit atop the tip of an iceberg of scoring point guards—the new version of the NBA point guard—who've taken the league by storm in recent years and whose footprint only figures to grow in those to come.
Curry put his otherworldly skill set to lethal use from start to finish in pursuit of his first MVP trophy last season. The Davidson product finished sixth in the league in both points (23.8) and assists (7.7) while shooting 48.7 percent from the field (44.3 percent from three). In doing so, Curry became just the 12th player in NBA history to log multiple seasons with averages of at least 23 points and seven dimes.
Another player who punctured his way into that club last season after years of knocking on the door: Russell Westbrook. The Oklahoma City Thunder's superstar guard led the league in scoring, at 28.1 points, while chipping in 8.6 assists per game—the fourth-most among his peers.
All told, Curry and Westbrook were two of 11 players in the Association to pace their respective squads in both total points and assists last season.
| Russell Westbrook | OKC | 67 | 1886 | 574 | 38.4% |
| Stephen Curry | GSW | 80 | 1900 | 619 | 28.9% |
| LeBron James | CLE | 69 | 1743 | 511 | 32.3% |
| James Harden | HOU | 81 | 2217 | 565 | 31.3% |
| Chris Paul | LAC | 82 | 1564 | 838 | 23.7% |
| Damian Lillard | POR | 82 | 1720 | 507 | 26.9% |
| John Wall | WAS | 79 | 1387 | 792 | 26.1% |
| Kyle Lowry | TOR | 70 | 1244 | 473 | 25.4% |
| Eric Bledsoe | PHX | 81 | 1377 | 493 | 23.7% |
| Monta Ellis | DAL | 80 | 1513 | 329 | 27.9% |
| Ty Lawson | DEN | 75 | 1143 | 720 | 20.6% |
There's only one bona fide forward (LeBron James) on the list. Few (if any) of the rest fit neatly into the pass-first mold Steve Nash once filled to perfection, and the likes of Ricky Rubio, Michael Carter-Williams and Rajon Rondo are still trying to keep it alive.
Harden was essentially the Houston Rockets' offense incarnate last season. He got to the free-throw line at will (a league-leading 824 times), knocked down a sturdy 37.5 percent of his threes and dished out seven assists a night.
Lowry filled a similar role in Toronto, until shouldering his load and DeMar DeRozan's wore him down. Ellis was primarily a scorer in Dallas, within the loose confines of the Mavericks' ball-sharing, free-flowing offense. Bledsoe split backcourt duties in Phoenix, first with Goran Dragic and Isaiah Thomas, then with Brandon Knight.
As for Wall and Lawson, they came into the league almost strictly as speed demons, but have since learned to harness their extra gears to become more lethal as scorers and passers.
The closest you'll find to a textbook point guard among this or any lot is Chris Paul. He controls the flow of play and commands his teammates' every move. He makes the right play far more often than not, as his four assist titles and his spectacular career ratio of 4.1 assists for every turnover suggest.
Paul, though, would probably compare himself not to a traditional point guard, but rather to one of the progenitors of the modern position: Isiah Thomas.
As Paul told the Los Angeles Times' Brad Turner in March 2014:
"Isiah is one of the greatest, one of the best to ever play the game. I think that fierceness that he played with, that edge...I'm not as quick or fast as he ever was, or as crafty. I always have this image in my head of Isiah Thomas. He was sort of in a double team and he kept doing these little cross-overs...Yeah, he was unreal.
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But even Thomas wasn't quite the first player of his kind. Nearly a decade before his debut, Nate "Tiny" Archibald, a Hall of Fame guard from the Bronx, became the first and only player in NBA history to score the most points and dish out the most dimes in the same season while playing for the then-Kansas City-Omaha Kings.
Since Thomas made his pro debut in 1981, the crop of guards who can man either backcourt spot offensively has fluctuated significantly. But in the aftermath of the 2000s, when big men ruled the basketball landscape, the annual population of players averaging better than 16 points and six assists seems to have rebounded:
Some of that stems from grassroots-level shifts. These days, the league is home to a generation of players who grew up idolizing Allen Iverson. As NBA veteran Jameer Nelson wrote for the Players' Tribune, there was much to admire about the way the Answer played, particularly during his peak with the Philadelphia 76ers:
"To me, Iverson was pound-for-pound the best guard of his era. No one competed harder than he did. As a teenager in the Philadelphia area, I watched him night after night. I kept hearing stories of how banged up he would get. People would literally beg him to take a night off, but being who he was and how big his heart was, he still played. Iverson left it all out on the hardwood every time.
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That was partly a function of Iverson's ball dominance. According to Basketball-Reference.com, he used a greater percentage of his team's possessions than did anyone else in the NBA five times in a six-season span between 1998-99 and 2003-04. Only Michael Jordan has ever matched or exceeded Iverson's usage, and he was (at least) six inches taller and surrounded by better teammates than Iverson ever was.
Both players did plenty to inspire the sport's successors, but for those shy of 6'6", Iverson provided the more appealing pattern. His attitude and appearance captured the attention of mainstream pop culture, but it's his style of play that's left the most visible legacy within the game itself.
Along with this increased supply of players with the skills to shine as scoring guards came a greater demand for them. Rule changes granting perimeter players greater freedom of motion bred a more wide-open, guard-oriented style of play, pioneered by Mike D'Antoni's famed spread pick-and-roll with the "Seven Seconds or Less" Phoenix Suns.
Combine that with the decline in the ranks of burly, back-to-basket bigs—and the lack of comparable replacements—and voila! Like the burrowing mammals peeking their heads above ground after the dinosaurs' mass extinction, the guards who had for generations been most useful for post entry passes now had the leeway to show what they could really do.
The result? As Nelson put it:
"Guards have made the NBA game a lot faster. It’s no longer a post-up-first league, where the guard brings the ball down and enters it to the big man the majority of the time. In today’s league, the role of guards as scorers is more important than ever before.
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That has everything to do with the heightened threat that guards now pose, due both to their own abilities and the evolution of a game that now better enables them to use those abilities.
With the pick-and-roll as the paradigm of most modern NBA offenses, those capable of running it have been further empowered to decide which avenue to pursue.
It's no wonder, then, that so many of the players featured on the above list of points and assists leaders also ranked among the most effective pick-and-roll operators last season:
| Stephen Curry | 29.5% | 46.5% | 0.97 | 92.7% |
| Kyrie Irving | 40.3% | 43.9% | 0.91 | 86.4% |
| Russell Westbrook | 33.8% | 39% | 0.79 | 61.7% |
| Chris Paul | 46.5% | 49.6% | 0.97 | 93% |
| Damian Lillard | 44% | 40.3% | 0.90 | 84.3% |
| John Wall | 39.7% | 40.2% | 0.74 | 47.7% |
| Kyle Lowry | 32.7% | 36.7% | 0.82 | 71.1% |
| Eric Bledsoe | 33.4% | 45.3% | 0.84 | 76.3% |
| Monta Ellis | 43.7% | 43.4% | 0.83 | 73.2% |
| Ty Lawson | 40.3% | 43.2% | 0.85 | 77.4% |
In truth, this reshuffling of the NBA game has affected players at every position, particularly on the offensive end. Proper spacing is put at a higher premium, and getting that spacing requires smarter, more flexible and more skilled players who won't clog up the court.
Guards and wings are now often interchangeable, with every perimeter player asked to both shoot and create. Guys who play the 3 are moved up to the 4 in small-ball lineups with regularity, and with the success the Warriors enjoyed with Draymond Green, a 4, moving up to the 5, that shift figures to become more popular among coaches in a copycat league as well.
And if you're a power forward who can't hit reliably from deep...well, you'd better find yourself a good shooting coach.
But if point guard was the most demanding spot in past eras, it hasn't become any easier to play today as the role has evolved—at least from the perspective of Nelson, who's played point in the All-Star Game and the NBA Finals over the course of his 11-year pro career:
"I’d argue that the point guard position has changed the most of any position over recent years. In the past, point guards were expected to act primarily as distributors. Today’s elite point guards are still great passers, but they’re also masters of disrupting the defense with their scoring prowess and aggressiveness.
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Curry, Irving, Westbrook and Paul are all prime examples of that. The same goes for all their peers mentioned herein.
There may be more than a few scoring point guards added to the their ranks in the near future.
D'Angelo Russell, the No. 2 pick in the 2015 NBA draft, played plenty of 2-guard as a freshman at Ohio State, but is known primarily for his court vision.
As a rookie for the Los Angeles Lakers, he'll be tasked with splitting playmaking duties with Kobe Bryant and Jordan Clarkson, among others. For Sports Illustrated's Lee Jenkins, the fact the Lakers, whose success has been built (largely) on the backs of bigs, took Russell over Duke's Jahlil Okafor speaks to how much the league around them has changed:
"In grabbing Russell, the Ohio State product, second overall, the Lakers finally and officially joined the small-ball revolution and the modern NBA. Now, they too employ a jitterbug who can bound around a high screen, sink a pull-up three or feather a telepathic pass, the bedrock of so much contemporary offense.
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Emmanuel Mudiay, the No. 7 pick of the Denver Nuggets this past June, is a subpar shooter, but is quick enough, strong enough and fearless enough to attack the paint at will and generate scoring opportunities for himself and his teammates. So long as he puts in the work to sharpen his jumper—which he has so far—Mudiay should excel in the pick-and-roll and, in turn, in the modern NBA.
Among the sophomores, Marcus Smart and Zach LaVine might both find themselves featured as scoring playmakers in due course.
Smart, the No. 6 pick in 2014, looks like the Boston Celtics' best bet for an all-around star among their in-house prospects. LaVine, the Minnesota Timberwolves' pick at No. 13 last year, had four point-assist double-doubles as a rookie. He could see his role expanded if the T-Wolves decide to move on from Rubio—which, according to the Boston Globe's Gary Washburn, they might—or if more playing time opens up at the 2.
The fact that a former phenom like Rubio, oft-injured and shot-averse, could be up for grabs may be a sign of the times at point guard. The same goes for Rondo, a former champion whose own recent health history and lack of a reliable jump shot contributed to his troubles finding anything more than a one-year deal with the Sacramento Kings as a free agent this summer.
Meanwhile, new Orlando Magic head coach Scott Skiles will have to figure out how to make his team's offense, ranked 27th in efficiency last season, per NBA.com, into a functional unit with the poor-shooting Elfrid Payton at the helm.
At this juncture, it might not be accurate to describe what's happening in the NBA as a positional revolution. If anything, the era of scoring point guards is already in full effect.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
