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I was thinking some about this question today, and wanted to hear people's opinions.

This season, 5 players who could reasonably be considered point guards stand a tier above the rest: Curry, LeBron, Westbrook, Harden, and CP3. How can we best compare them, given that their playing styles and team situations are so different? Where do they stand among great point guards historically?

-Curry's the reigning unanimous MVP, and he's been extremely efficient offensively this season. However his scoring has decreased slightly with the addition of Durant, and his assists, rebounds, and steals are at their lowest marks in years. To what extent is he culpable for the Warriors' periodic struggles on defense?

-LeBron's a consensus top-3 player of all time, and is coming off of one of the best playoff performances in recent memory. He's averaging a near triple double so far, but he's been somewhat less efficient scoring this year, and his steals and blocks are near career lows. He turns 32 next month, and may end up playing significantly fewer minutes this season due to periodic rest.

-Harden is surprisingly leading the league in assists, and by a wide margin, in addition to being an efficient high-volume scorer. However, he's also leading the league in turnovers, and he too is plumbing career lows in steals and blocks, concerning considering his reputation as a bad defender.

-Westbrook looks like the most serious threat to average a triple double, and he may well lead the league in scoring too. He's been inefficient though, in shooting percentages and in turnovers, and his steal/block numbers have also been disappointing so far. Despite his best efforts, it looks like the Thunder will have to struggle to make the playoffs, let alone contend.

-CP3 has been a paradigm of efficiency, both as a passer and as a scorer. He's also leading the league in steals, spearheading the Clippers' league-best defense. In terms of volume, though, his offense has been fairly pedestrian. To what extent can we credit his play and leadership with the Clippers' amazing start?

Some general things to think about:

What do advanced stats say about the importance of volume vs. efficiency, both in scoring and in passing? On a bad team, high volume, low efficiency basketball may be more valuable than low volume, high efficiency basketball, while the opposite is likely true on a good team. Can we account for this in some way? How about the fact that a star player can have a bigger +/- impact on a bad team than on an already-good team? How valuable are rebounds at the guard position, anyway? How harmful is bad defense/low steals at the point guard position?

Discuss!

Note: I intentionally made it so that you can change your vote in the poll, so feel free to make a pick now and then change it as the season continues!

LeBron has his second lowest winshares per 48 of last 10 years (and lowest PER and BPM and not in top 5 of any of these this season).

Paul is the runaway leader on winshares per 48 and his team has the best record. (First on PER and a close second on BPM). I'll give him the quick take nod.

RPM will add evidence / opinion in a month or so.

Westbrook has slight lead on BPM but winshares per 48 only has him at 9th.

My alltime ranks for these players:

rk player
_2 LeBron
31 Paul
36 Westbrook
66 Curry
102 Harden

They're all among the top 12 in this year's VORP, top 13 in BPM, top 15 in Win Shares, top 14 in WS/48, top 16 in PER
http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... aders.html
In PER and WS/48, Kemba, Lillard, Isiah, and George Hill rank above LeBron.
In BPM, Kemba and Hill rank over Curry.

RPM estimate for Paul seals his first place for me. Second? I don't really care.

Not Curry. Nothing really loves him (RPM, BPM, WS/48, etc.) over the others this year.

Paul is ahead of Harden in RPM, WS/48 and BPM, Harden has higher OBPM but DBPM gap for Paul makes up for it. Overall there is little to support Harden over Paul. Also especially with Beverley now starting the last 3 games Paul is more of a PG than Harden

Westbrook has highest BPM but it's thanks to his high DBPM (4.2) which neither passes the sniff test or is backed up by DRPM (-0.98). He has uniquely high rebounding numbers compared to the others so I guess a case can be made for him depending on how things are weighted, but the answer is probably Paul. For that matter Paul also has best on/off even though he has more talented supporting cast

I'm not considering LBJ a PG and he wouldn't be first anyways

How much stock do you guys put in the DBPM ratings of Westbrook (+3.9), Paul (+3.5), and Curry (-2.8)?

Westbrook ranks #6 in the league at the moment, at +3.9, but his defensive on/off splits aren't particularly impressive. The Thunder are 4 points/48 better defensively with him on the court, but 9 points/48 better with Adams on the court, and 14 points/48 better with Oladipo on the court, which makes me doubt his case a little bit.

Paul's case is a little safer; the Clippers are 8 points better defensively with him on the court, the best mark on the team. While his rebounding numbers have shown signs of regressing towards his career mean, he's still getting steals at an extraordinary rate. The interesting thing for him is that historically DBPM has considered him just a mildly above-average defender, somewhere between -0.4 and +1.0 each of the last 6 years. It will be interesting to see if he and the Clippers maintain anything close to this level of excellence.

Curry was also considered a mildly above-average defender by BPM the last few seasons, but has fallen off a cliff so far this season thanks to a diminished rebound rate and a career-low steal rate. The Warriors have been about 2 points worse defensively with him on the court, and 4 points better with his backup Livingston on the court. Has he really become a defensive liability seemingly overnight? If anything is a concern for the Warriors it's arguably their defense; it's been over 20 years since a team won the championship after allowing 100+ points per game during the regular season, and the Warriors are currently allowing 107.

RPM updated overnight, so this seems like a good time to take another look at this interesting race:

WS/48: Paul (1), Harden (4), Curry (7), James (9), Westbrook (16)
BPM: Westbrook (1), Paul (2), Harden(3), James (5), Curry (10)
RPM: Paul (1), Harden (3), Westbrook (5), James (6), Curry (11)

AVG: Paul (1.3), Harden (3.3), James (6.7), Westbrook (7.3), Curry (9.3)

Paul remains at the head of the pack, with his excellent defense being the tiebreaker over Harden. Westbrook remains a polarizing figure among metrics, as well as among humans. James has surged into the top ten in most advanced stats following his breakout 44 point game last week. Curry's lukewarm season continues, though it's hard to completely overlook his role in making the Durant transition so smooth.

After much mainstream talk about the Cavs', Clippers', and Thunder's struggles without their leaders, here's a look at on-off splits (per 100 poss) for these 5 stars. I've also included team assist splits, a more point guard specific measure of impact.

James: +14.1 on court, -8.6 off court, +22.7 net, +6 assists net
Paul: +14.8 on, -4.4 off court, +19.2 net, +4.7 assists net
Westbrook: +6.6 on court, -11.5 off court, +18.1 net, +2 assists net
Curry: +16.2 on court, +3.2 off court, +13 net, + +2.6 assists net
Harden: +9.4 on court, -0.6 off court, +10 net, +2.8 assists net

Interestingly, these basic plus/minus stats point to LeBron as the most impactful point guard, having an even greater effect on his team's passing than Paul. While Kyrie also handles significant PG duties for the Cavs, they average only 2.3 more assists per 100 possessions with him on the court, making it fairly clear that LeBron is the guy who really makes the offense hum.

I'd like to get your opinions on this topic again now that we're in the home stretch of the season. Who's the best of the lot, and are any of these guys having seasons among the best ever for a point guard?

Curry's perhaps having the most underwhelming season out of all of them, but he's still the best player on possibly the best team of all time (going by scoring margin). He's arguably the best 3-point shooter in NBA history. He's racked up a surprising 17 steals over his last 5 games to move up to 8th in the the NBA in steals per game; at this rate he may well lead the NBA in steals again this year.

Harden's the MVP favorite. As a scorer he can be both explosive and efficient, and he leads the league in assists. Real plus/minus considers him the best offensive player in the league by a substantial margin, but only the 11th best player overall on account of his poor defense.

Westbrook is, of course, on pace to average a triple double. At the same time, though, he has the highest scoring rate per minute of any player since Jordan 30 years ago, eclipsing Curry's mark from last year with a burst of four consecutive 40-point games.

Paul remains way under the radar due to his modest numbers in terms of counting stats, and his missed games due to injury. When he's played though, his impact has been obvious. He's still the best defensive point guard in the league (and among the best defensive players overall according to RPM), and he's still inarguably the best passer as well, with the best assist rate, and by far the best assist/TO ratio of any point guard. It's easy to forget that he's also shooting 41% from 3, also the best mark out of these 5 guys.

LeBron, already a consensus top-3 player of all time, is on pace to set new career highs in assists per game, rebounds per game, and 3-pointers per game. In February he averaged 26 points per game on mind-boggling 64% shooting from the field and 57% from 3, making it abundantly clear that he's as unstoppable as ever as a scorer.


Who's having the best season? Who would you want at point guard to win one game? Do guys like Lowry, Wall, and Thomas have a place in this conversation? What about non-traditional point guards like Butler, who has climbed up to 2nd in the league in RPM and averaged 7.4 assists per game last month? Or Green, who's the leading assist man behind the best offense in league history while targeting a DPOY award at the other end?


What's the future of the point guard position? Will Antetokounmpo and Jokic evolve into real 8+ assist per game monster point guards? Will Ball and Fultz take the league by storm?

Re: the creator / distributor role, it might be interesting to see how many players in league above 6-4 (or whatever height) and some minutes threshold had assist rates above some standard (20 or 25%?) thru the years. Has the non-PG high level creator / distributor total expanded overall or just shifted away from SGs?

My sense is that there's a little bit of an uptick recently in big men taking on facilitator roles, but Antetokounmpo and Jokic are remarkable outliers rather than the leaders of a new breed of passing bigs. Here are the best BPM marks of all time by players age 22 and younger:

LeBron James: 9.3
Magic Johnson: 9.2
Chris Paul: 9.2
Nikola Jokic: 8.2
Michael Jordan: 8.2
Giannis Antetokounmpo: 7.8

By this standard, and by most statistical standards, all the praise heaped on these guys so far doesn't really do justice to their amazing potential. If you had to pick a young star to build a franchise around, these guys should be 1-2 on your list in some order, end of discussion. They have a great chance to develop into the best floor generals of their generation.

How the hell is CP getting all these votes? Come on guys, I know everyone here likes numbers. I get that, but would anyone seriously prefer CP3 over Steph or Harden or Russ on their team this season?

poll is from the start of the season, not a reflection on the year. people may have voted throughout, but regardless, i don't think the results are reflective of whom people would for vote now.

sndesai1 wrote:poll is from the start of the season, not a reflection on the year. people may have voted throughout, but regardless, i don't think the results are reflective of whom people would for vote now.

But wait, after 2 consecutive MVP's and arguably the most dominant offensive season in NBA history, Steph had 0 votes (until I just voted for him lol) going into this season? That's hard to believe.

Can I chalk it up to small sample and bots?

You can change your vote at any time.