posted by tziller
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With all the irrepressible superlatives the draft season brings, a few dirty words make their way into our collective lexicon. Tweener. Below-the-rim player. Combo guard. The last of these has killed many a draft stock price, sending fine college guards into the late first round purgatory generally filled with white power forwards, 5'11 point guards, and 18-year-old Frenchmen no one but the Spurs have heard of.
This year, several serious prospects have been cursed with the Combo Guard label, a nametag which could send lottery talents to the 20s, first round players to the second. But what the hell does Combo Guard even mean? Could front-office draft analysts even pick a Combo Guard out of a real NBA line-up?
In NBA analysis, few even care about the classification of players beyond the arcane positional taxonomy or measures of quality. A player is a good point guard, or a crap power forward, or an average swingman. Every metaphor weighs almost solely on final justification (or renouncement) of a player's aptitude at basketball in total, not in the vital aspects of basketball. Why? Few players (LeBron, for one) can excel at everything, so why do we measure players by their ability to do everything?
Even in deeper consideration of the point guard position, quality assessment lords over assessment. John Hollinger has a metric named Pure Point Rating. By design, it is an improvement on the contemptible assist-to-turnover ratio. In short, Hollinger's PPR discounts assists by a third, and adjusts for minutes and team tempo. In the end, you get a list of good point guards with particular emphasis on the top assistmen. Quality is the central component -- Paul, Calderon and Nash topped the list, in that order.
But quality is not the same as purity. Hollinger has an affinity for naming his metrics to suggest improvement over the standard fare (True Shooting percentage, for example), so perhaps he means PPR as "a point guard rating freed of the oppressive shackles of overweighted assists and slow teams." But PPR certainly does not measure a point guard's purity. Would anyone argue Paul as a more pure PG than Nash or Calderon, or Jason Kidd? Of course not, by our common definition of purity (one who looks to pass first, score second).
So how do we aptly measure purity? By taking quality out of the equation. We do not judge here, we only describe. Let's take measureable point guard activities on one side (that'd be assists) and measureable impure PG activities on the other (that'd be shots, which can be boiled into FGAs and FTAs). We'll adjust FTAs to account for the reality of 2-shot fouls ('FTAs x 0.44' is the standard here). We'll find the league average for point guards and adjust accordingly to get a nice round scale. And, of course, we'll stick a catchy name on it and slap it into a shiny graphic. Thus, The Purity Scale.
It's a 0-100 scale, with higher numbers telling of a higher level of Point Guard Purity. Above, 0-100 moves left to right. Leandro Barbosa (not really a PG) sits at 23 and Jason Kidd tops out at 97 (!). The scale includes only those PGs who a) played at least 800 minutes in 2007-08, and b) averaged at least 30 minutes per game. In the list here, I have added those PGs who averaged 20 minutes per game, but still topped 800 total minutes.
Again, this is not a ranking of quality. This tells you only who are the most pure (and impure) PGs in the league. Unsurprisingly, Kidd, Nash, Calderon are quite pure. Monta Ellis? Jason Terry? A.I.? Not so much.
Based on the groupings we see on our Scale, there are a lot of incredible "combo guards" in our league. Baron Davis. Reigning Finals MVP Tony Parker (who has roughly three shooting possessions for every assist he makes). Chauncey Billups. Of course, some of these can be attributed to the offense system these players use. Famously, San Antonio basketball results in few assists (though I'll note that Avery Johnson averaged 7+ assists in 31 minutes in SA's first title season, playing in the exact same offense, versus 6 assts in 33 minutes for Parker this year; Parker is less pure than AJ, certainly).
All four teams still competing boast impure PGs, combo guards who shoot at least twice as often as they earn an assist. Two (Billups, Parker) are considered among the best in the league; the others (Rondo, Fisher) are considered solid at worst. Yet we curse every prospect without the vision of Kidd (his team lost in five in the first round) or Nash (ditto), relegating these lepers to the bargain bin.
Chris Paul stormed the universe this year. Deron Williams was also brilliant. These matters seemingly have the greater Chicago area set on Derrick Rose, lauding THE RISE OF THE PURE POINT GUARD. And while these fellows are more pure than most, they aren't holy angels of unselfishness and good intentions. Paul was a 20 ppg scorer, for goodness sake. And even more, Rose's freshman totals would place him with Marbury on our scale!
Our perspective on what makes a point guard great is seriously warped, and I blame it all on the false heralding of the assist as a game-changer and of purity as the singular path to point guard greatness. Because we believe assists to be of utmost import, and because pure point guards are more valued than scorers, we consider PGs who get lots of assists to be pure and thus, the best. They supposedly raise the game of their teammates. They make everything offense easier. They lead, muzzled or not, because they pass. It's malarkey (and I offer Jason Kidd as proof).
This map shows a team's offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) on the x axis and a team's rate of assists per made field goals on the y axis. Good offensive teams to the right, bad ones to the left. High assist teams up top, low assist teams on the bottom. Based on conventional wisdom, you'd expect to see all the good offenses in the top right (with lots of assists) or the bad guys in the bottom left (with few assists), right?
Wrong.
There's no measureable relationship between a team's rate of assists and a team's offensive performance. (For the statgeeks, the correlation for the past four seasons is -0.011.) There's only a tiny correlation between ast/FGM and effective FG% (0.061). It's the same for ast/FGM and two-point FG% (0.065). You can be good at offense and a good passing team (Utah, Phoenix), but you can also be bad at offense and a good passing team (New Jersey, the Clippers). You can be good at offense without racking up assists (Golden State, Orlando). The two concepts, on a leaguewide basis, are not dependent on each other.
This is not to say assists should be ignored. Many systems require ball movement. Quite honestly most personnel in the league (including every player on the 2005-08 Phoenix Suns not surnamed Nash or Diaw) needs help from a good pass to perform at peak efficiency. But as described in a thorough Wall Street Journal Numbers Guy blog post by Carl Bialik, the assist's measureable value is in serious question. Quite possibly, no assist is created equal, and our rash cookie-cutter generalizations only cloud the value of the pass, discounting the truly vital (an alley-oop, a backdoor bounce for an easy layup) to the level of the coincidental (the shuffle pass which leads to single-clutch fall-away from 15).
But despite the veil over the value of the pass, we demand purity. Some of our best point guards (Parker, Billups) are not pure in any sense, but we shun the combo guard. On a league level, assists having nothing to do with offensive production, but we dismiss those who can't drop eight dimes a game. This is all very absurd, as four conference finalists are showing us right now. It must stop.
And my dear Combo Guards, please do not try to become something you're not. Jerryd and Russell and O.J. and even you Derrick: Screw your reputation. Fire away, brothers. Fire away.
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phdribble throw it down big man. well done. well. done. -
Zorgon When TZiller runs out of ideas for charts, I think I might cry.
Amazing! I think some of the guards were in obvious places, but it was surprising to see where a few others landed.
But I think the combo guard argument you're missing here is that most people think that combo guards are a dime a dozen. If your "star" combo guard goes down, it souldn't be too hard to find 10 more in the D-League. You know, "more where that came from". But pass first and "pure" PGs are a lot more hard to find. I mean, the first chart speaks for itself. The might be no justification, but it's basically the same reason that so many project big men are picked up in the draft: because it's a lot harder to find a good project big man than it is to find a good guard. I rest my case.
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mcwelk Doubyous post. -
Jason Among starting point guards from championship teams over the past two decades, you could argue that Avery was the only pass-first one of the bunch. Isiah dished out a lot of assists, but he also led the Pistons in scoring. Fisher averaged just 2.6 assists per game during the Lakers' last title season. Ron Harper ... B.J. Armstrong ... Kenny Smith ... some of those guys weren't even point guards.-
holycalamity You could make a serious argument that Michael Jordan was more of a point guard than his backcourtmates. On the Bulls championship teams, Jordan's backcourt partner was either a spot up shooter (Armstrong, Paxson, Kerr) or Ron Harper.
Indeed, if your primary ballhandler isn't a legit scoring threat, your team isn't going anywhere unless you have extraordinary talent elsewhere (say, Tim Duncan/David Robinson at the two bigs).
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straight.bangin The point guard of those Bulls teams was Scottie Pippen as much as anyone else.
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EthanJaynes Great Post!
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ballerblogger I really enjoyed this article Tom. -
RedsArmy Great stuff.. although I don't know anyone in Boston who would list Rondo as a combo guard. But I guess he fits into the criteria you set up -
docksquad33 Great post! -
jwjeff Great post. Delicious charts, as always.
I think people are down on combo guards because they tend to be undersized 2-guards, and undersized 2's are less likely to succeed (how will a 6-3 shooting guard shoot over a 6-6 defender?). Guys like Barbosa, Ellis and Ben Gordon are rare.
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ballerblogger It all comes down to basketball IQ to me.
It doesn't matter how big a guard is, if he knows how to play the game, teams will find a spot on the floor for him.
Take a look at some of the guys Jason mentioned in his comment.
Guys like Derek Fisher, Ron Harper, B.J. Armstrong, and Kenny Smith. The one thing they had in common was extraordinary basketball intelligence.
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Robtastic Is it weird if I ask you to marry me?-
And One It would only be weird if he accepted.
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miguel Interesting...Billups and Parker have won championships, while Nash and Kidd haven't. Stockton is definitely a pure point guard who famously never won a title. Oscar Robertson, Isiah Thomas, and Magic Johnson were all great scorers who averaged over 20 points multiple times. -
Shmalvin To say that: "There's no measureable relationship between a team's rate of assists and a team's offensive performance" is ludicrous.
Many times this season both Phil Jackson and Greg Popovich (2 great coaches, imho) have judged their team performances on ratio of assists to made baskets.
A final thought, it is probably no coincidence that the 3/4 of the current remaining teams (LAL; DET; BOS) are classified here as "Good offense, high assists." The 4th team (SAS) is basically in the middle of the chart.
I would concur that through a season there are plenty of teams that win games with low assist ratios (CLE comes to mind), but the best performing teams are vhisotrically all "Good offense, high assists" teams.
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EP That's a good point about all assists not being created equal, which is much neglected in most commentary about the game. A corollary of that, I think, is that players who are known for getting a lot of assists tend to be given a lot of assists. That is, the score-keepers are more generous about what qualifies as an assist when, say, Nash makes a pass than when the average player makes a pass. There's a tendency to assume that since he's a good assist man, he must be making good assists.
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Tom Ziller of FanHouse and SacTown Royalty fame knows that "combo guard" isn't a four-letter word.
Some of our best point guards (Parker, Billups) are not pure in any sense, but we shun the combo guard. On a league level, assists having nothing to do with offensive production, but we dismiss those who can't drop eight ...
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"Derrick Rose is not a pure point! I'm going to kick the next guy that says that in the nuts!"
This was me about three weeks before the draft, screaming at Corn in a Winston-Salem bar. ESPN was having a little draft preview segment and I caught the words on the subtitles and immediately started freaking out.
This isn't a criticism of Rose, in fact, some might consider it a compliment.
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Let me repeat: 82 and Mo!
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Small forwards: 2/7 (DX), 3/10 (Net)
Combo forwards*: 2/3 (DX), 0 (Net)
Shooting guards: 5/10 (DX), 4/8 (Net)
Point guards: 4/8 (DX), 4/9 (Net)
Combo guards**: 2/3 (DX), 1/2 (Net)
* a player type I’ve grown wary of.
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