Top 10 NBA point guards
WhatIfSports.com is a website that specializes in answering the great “What if?” questions in sports by simulating games between historical teams in professional basketball, football, baseball, and hockey, or collegiate football and basketball. In this article, WhatIfSports utilizes its statistical technology to rank the best NBA Point Guards ever.
After eras dominated by high-flying scorers like Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins, and powerful centers Shaquille O’Neal and Hakeem Olajuwon, point guards are all the rage right now in the NBA and Jason Kidd was the most sought after player at the trade deadline. Young players like Chris Paul, Jose Calderon, Jameer Nelson, and Deron Williams are keeping their teams in the hunt for division championships. And very good teams like San Antonio with Damon Stoudamire and Boston with Sam Cassell are doing everything they can to bring in another presence at the point to keep them in title contention.
Perhaps the poster child for the NBA’s floor general focus, Steve Nash, is quietly putting together another ridiculous offensive season to lead the Phoenix Suns to a record over 20 games above .500. In 2004, when Nash went back to the Suns from Dallas, he and head coach Mike D’Antoni kicked off the trend by taking a young, small athletic team to running teams out of the gym and playing efficient, entertaining basketball.
Yet, where do some of the players from the current crop rank among the greatest point guards of all time? With a complete database of all NBA (and ABA) stats dating back to 1951, and after conducting an abundance of basketball statistical research to build our simulation engines we decided to find the answer to that question by ranking the top 10 point guards in NBA history.
The list will be found on the following pages, but let me clarify some of the pieces that we touched on with our article on the the top 10 NFL quarterback seasons list. First of all, players are subject to comparison relative to their respective seasons as well as historically. This means that players are not penalized for playing in certain eras. This is typically called normalization. In basketball, we typically do this on a percentage basis where some stats like three-point attempts and offensive rebounds before the 1980s have to be approximated based on comparative modern players.
For instance, we consider offensive rebounding percentages as a ratio of missed shots by the player’s team, while the player is on the floor and are rebounded by that player. These values are also compared against all players from that season. Other important ratios that are handled similarly and used in this ranking are steal, block, assist, turnover, and scoring percentages as well as a defensive rating we've calculated called stop percentage. We've listed most of these stats on a per-48 minutes played basis below to keep them meaningful.
Second, not all of the stats that sound important truly are. Field goal percentage is very important with regards to efficiency, but there are better measures. Here, we look at “true shooting percentage,” a scoring efficiency measure popularized by analyst John Hollinger. Steve Nash is a great example of this difference. His 48.3% career field goal percentage going into this season is good, yet is only seventh on this list. However, Nash’s true-shooting percentage of 60.2% is third among these 10 players. This drastic increase reflects Nash’s prowess on three-point and free-throw attempts. Again, to make things as meaningful as possible, we've tried to capture efficiency below with the simpler points per shot.
The top 10 point guards in NBA history are ranked by an internal formula that is utilized in our simulation engine and takes all of the above into account. For this analysis we considered only point guards who played at least 25,000 career minutes (roughly 10 full seasons). Among those who would have made the top 10, yet were ineligible due to the minutes requirement are Mark Price and Chris Paul (he has a ways to go for the minutes). Quality of the ratio stats, as opposed to raw quantity over time, is the only factor used in the formula.
Some notable players who just missed the cut include Nate “Tiny” Archibald at No. 20, Bob Cousy at No. 17 (strictly statistical -- “innovation” is not considered) and Isiah Thomas at No. 11.
*Includes approximated data.
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