By NICK SLOAN,
NJSloan212@gmail.com
They say the point guard position is like being the quarterback in football.
I don't quite buy that comparison, but needless to say, a great point guard can transform a good team to a championship-winning team.
Who were the 10 greatest point guards in NBA history?
My list:
10. Chris Paul
It might be easy to say he's just played seven years, but they've been seven excellent years. He's transformed two bad teams into winners - he took both the New Orleans Hornets and Los Angeles Clippers into the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. Statistically, he averages 18.8 points, 9.8 assists, 4.5 rebounds and 2.4 steals a game. He's topped the NBA in steals four times and has led the league in assists twice. He's a great player and if he remains healthy, he cracks the Top 5 list easily.
9. Steve Nash
He won two MVP awards, something difficult for a point guard not named Magic Johnson. In seven of his last eight seasons, he's averaged at least 10.5 assists a game. He's led the NBA in assists five times on average and six times numerically. He's a career 43 percent shooter from three and is a life-time 90 percent free-throw shooter. At the age of 37, he averaged 12.5 and 10.7 for a team void of talent. His defense, or lack there of, keeps me from putting him higher. However, make no mistake, Nash is a darn good point guard and the Miami Heat should go after him for one or two years.
8. Jason Kidd
Over 18 seasons in the NBA, Kidd's averaged 13-9-6.5 and is third all-time in triple-doubles just behind The Big O and a guy named Magic. Kidd was responsible for two slightly above-average New Jersey Nets team making the NBA Finals -
twice. Somehow, the second Nets team beat the Spurs twice. He's averaged at least nine assists a game in 11 seasons and had tremendous longevity. His playoff success puts him above Nash and Paul and he was a great rebounder for a point guard. He averaged 13-9-8 in 2006-07 and had six seasons in averaging 7 or more rebounds.
7. Bob Cousy
Cousy was the leader for the great Boston Celtics teams and no point guard has won more NBA titles than Cousy. He was also a 13-time All-Star, an MVP winner and was the best point guard for a long, long time in the league. He was truly the first great passer in the game. I have him lower on my list for the fact that he never won a title without Bill Russell, one of the all-time great winners. Plus, while this sounds unfair, the game has evolved. Still a great player and an important piece to those great Boston teams.
6. Walt Frazier
A seven-time All-Star, Frazier and Gary Payton are the two best defensive point guards in NBA history - and it's probably not close. Frazier was a clutch player for the Knicks teams that won titles in 1970 and 1973. In Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals (the Willis Reed game), he had 36 points, 19 assists and 5 steals. There wasn't a hole in Frazier's game and was one of the all-around great point guards in history.
5. John Stockton
Stockton led the NBA in assists nine straight years. Nine. During that stretch, he averaged no less than 11.2 assists a game. He also led the NBA in steals twice, though his defense became worse as his career went on. He shot a career 51 percent from the field and ended his career averaging 13.1 points and 10.5 assists a game. He did not miss a game in 17 seasons out of the 19 he played. I keep him a lower than the top four guys on this list because I think his peak wasn't quite as good as the next four guys.
4. Gary Payton
This might be the controversial selection on this list, but hear me out. Payton, all around, was a better player than Stockton and he had less around him. As much of a freak Shawn Kemp was, was there any doubt Payton was the leader of those great Supersonics teams in the 1990s? Payton was the best defensive point guard in NBA history - he made nine All-NBA Defensive Teams during his career and is the only point guard in NBA history to win Defensive Player of the Year. He had an underrated great season in 1999, averaging 24.2 points, 8.9 rebounds and 6.5 assists a game. At the age of 33, he basically averaged 22-9-5 a game. He's one of the few players who did a good job against Michael Jordan. He did a reasonably good job on Jordan the last three games of the 1996 NBA Finals after George Karl made the switch. In the era where point guards are more known for their offense, Payton has become insanely underrated. Having grown up in the 1990s, I always thought Payton was a tad better than Stockton. Plus, Payton never had a Hall of Famer around him during his prime in Seattle. If you switch Stockton and Payton, the two Utah teams that were beaten by the Jordan Bulls teams would have at least one of those rings. I'm convinced of that.
3. Isiah Thomas
Thomas was the leader and best player for two teams that won NBA titles - the Bad Boy Pistons teams in the late 1980's. Thomas was very clutch and won games alone for the Pistons - he scored 16 points in the final 90 seconds in the 1984 NBA Playoffs against the New York Knicks. He also played one of the single greatest quarters in NBA Finals history with an injured ankle. He was selected to 12 NBA All-Star teams and was the MVP of the 1990 NBA Finals. In terms of the true definition of a point guard, he's probably the best pure point guard in NBA history.
2. Oscar Robertson
Robertson was the last player to average a triple-double during the season - he averaged 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists a game, though it's a little overrated if you look at the era of basketball that he played in. The era Robertson played in allowed for more rebounding because more shots were missed and more shots were taken. Robertson's early teams averaged nearly 70 rebounds a game because of the pace and because of the all the misses. Still, he was an excellent player who is one of just four point guards in NBA history to win an MVP award.
1. Magic Johnson
Where the hell do you start?
Instead of a paragraph, Magic deserves several bullet points:
- He's the only point guard in NBA history to win three MVP awards.
- In a stretch of four years, Magic won a high school state title, an NCAA title and an NBA title.
- Magic played perhaps the single greatest game in NBA history - a 42 points, 15 rebounds and 7 assists game where he had to play center for an injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Game 6 of the 1980 NBA Finals.
- He won five rings, second to only Cousy as a point guard. Those five rings were won during the toughest and deepest era in NBA basketball history.
- He made nine appearances in the NBA finals.
- At the age of 21, he averaged 18.6 points, 9.6 rebounds, 9.5 assists a game and 2.7 steals, an underrated all-time great season that becomes a triple-double in Oscar Robertson's era.
- A lifetime 52 percent shooter from the field and 85 percent shooter from the line. His shooting was underrated and he developed a decent three-point shot before the end of his career.
- He made first team All-NBA nine straight years.
- He did all of this before the Age of 32, when he announced he had to quit playing basketball because of HIV.
