Point Guards by definition are not supposed to take over a game, they are supposed to create for teammates. All-Time Great players win titles, and they don't need anybody to create for them (you rarely get assists dumping a ball into the post). Most point guards are also short, therefore unable to truly dominate the way a great wing can. Having said that, Isiah Thomas and Chauncey Billups were the best players on their teams, and Parker was the second leading scorer om the Spurs. (the Lakers also had a pretty decent point guard in the 80's)
Building off of this, the one exception I can see is if you have a physical freak of a PG that is like 6'6 or above that comes along. In that case, esp. with the recent perimeter rule changes and the league shifting slightly to a more perimeter oriented game, I could see another version sort of like Jordan/Pippen winning championships. Of course, that is an exception to the rule. I don't foresee any rule changes that would ever make building around a PG + Anything better than building around a Wing + Big as far as being the blueprint for success.
What if you have a wing that is several inches taller that can also facilitate the offense but can also shoot over players more easily, rebound better, defend more positions, etc...?
A. Paul / Williams and Howard / Yao B. Paul / Williams and Bryant / James C. Bryant / James and Howard / Yao IMO, C > A > B.
The fact is elite wings can create like great point guards, but point guards can't score like elite wings.
I think this is probably a big part of it. If you have two equally skilled players, but one is 4 inches taller, they will likely be better players. It's hard to be a transcendent talent when you're the shortest person on the court and probably won't be able to have any kind of inside or post-up game. Also, like you said, elite wings tend to have PG abilities, so it might be a sort of distinction without a difference. Guys who can both score and pass tend to get put at SG so they can focus on the scoring side. So at a young age, a Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant probably could have been PGs, but since they were so good at scoring, that's what they focused on and they became NBA shooting guards. That might also partially explain why you don't have that level of scoring greatness at the NBA point guard position as much.
The odd thing is that my favorite player to watch is probably Chris Paul. Nash is right there, too. I am just constantly amazed at their court vision and ability to deceive opposing players. It's just really fun to watch the deceptiveness. I prefer that over watching a big oaf like Shaq or Yao do their thing. That doesn't mean I would want to build a franchise around them or pay them max or near max dollars as part of my organizational philosophy. I just enjoy watching the some of things they do on the court as individuals.
I think you could make a case that outside of those transcendent players, PGs contribute as much to a good team as any other position. If you take the remaining teams w/o transcendent players in this year's playoffs (take out San Antonio, Cleveland, Los Angeles), you're left with: Suns - PG/Big Jazz - PG/Big Magic - PG/Big (though they have lots of really good wings too) Boston - a whole bunch of guys Atlanta - not really sure If you go to the eliminated teams: Denver - PG/Wing OkC - PG/Wing Portland - Wing/Big Mavs - Big + a bunch o' guys I haven't paid enough attention to the NBA to really have a sense of how the eastern teams were built.
PG is still more important. Here is my argument. How many championships have been won without 2 max salaries (superstar players) in the last 10 years? One, the Detroit Pistons. This team was so good they beat the star packed Lakers. Billups and Wallace were the best players on that team. A team with a smart, highly efficient PG, and a dominant big man wins games.
I love how power forward has not entered anywhere into this argument. Suck it, Karl Malone and Charles Barkley. And no, Tim Duncan, you are not a PF. I do think the argument that PG's of the past would have been more dominant and had a chance to succeed in today's game. It's just called so much in their favor now. Speed is at a premium as Brooks has shown us. Lumbering bigs have never been so starved for work.
At the end of games, the best player on the team needs to force the issue. Sure we praise Jordan or Kobe for making the right pass at the end of games, but that's really a rarity, most of the time those guys force the issue and take their shot. Can a PG be an elite finisher at the end of games? Absolutely. The game is tilted heavily toward quick players. PGs with elite quickness are unstoppable and can get a clean look any time they want. So why don't we have more great PG finishers? because they need to keep their teammates happy and the offense humming for the 1st 45 minutes of a game before flipping a switch and going for their own score. Elite PG need to play like Jason Kidd for the first 45 minutes and Michael Jordan for the last 3. It's too much to handle for most guys, so you end up with PGs who are known as chuckers and other PGs who pass too much to non elite teammates at the end of games. I mean, if you double Steve Nash, he's passing the ball, it's in his training, he's too programmed to take the shot by himself. There is one guy that figured it out, Isaiah Thomas. He'd play set up man at the beginning of games and turn his scoring on later. I have some hope that Brandon Jennings can also find the switch.
I don't think you're winning a championship if Jennings is one of your top 2 players. I do think he could be a piece on a contender but that's about it. To me, he is sort of like a slightly upgraded version of Brooks, physically. He is a little bit taller/longer but not enough to compensate for his similarly diminutive frame. He has more upside because he has natural PG skills and is a better defender/rebounder. I'm not sure if he's as good of a shooter as Brooks. I don't want to look too much into his rookie numbers because of his age. He has shown enough that I think that he will dramatically improve his efficiency. He shoots the 3-ball well and he's 80%+ from the line. While Parker is a relatively diminutive PG that has had success as a core player, I would argue that San Antonio and Tim Duncan made him who he is. If he had come into the league under any other circumstances, he's probably barely talked about at this point. You could also make a pretty good argument that Ginobili is more valuable to that team than Parker.
Reading what BrooksBall has had to say and the agruements behind it, I think i tend to agree with you... other than Parker, Billups and of course Magic Johnson, most of the successful championship contenders have been with a Wing + Big... I guess I was just thinking that this day and age everyone wants to have the best PG in the league and maybe that is a bit overrated now that I think about it.
Unless you have Wade, LeBron, Pierce, or Melo you need to have one of the top PGs to win a championship.
That's kind of the point though, isn't it? How many championships over the last few decades were won with a true PG as one of the team's top 2 players? Here's a list to work with: http://www.nba.com/history/finals/champions.html Jordan and Kobe, a couple of elite wings, have been on 10 of those teams. The Spurs have had a quasi-dynasty but the most valuable skill of their starting PG on 3 of those teams has been scoring the ball. You could also argue that after Duncan, Ginobili is the 2nd most valuable player on that team, or at least as valuable as Parker. Ginobili was the more key player in their 2005 run. Look at his stats. Insane percentages and he got to the line 185 times! In 2002-03, neither of them were particularly dominant. It was Duncan in his prime along with a combination of Stephen Jackson, Ginobili and a very young Parker, among other players. The Rockets 2 chips came with Hakeem + several solid players. Clyde, a wing, was probably the 2nd most productive player during his run. The only clear exceptions are the Pistons 3 championships and in those cases, they had a very hard to come by set of very, very good players at multiple positions. Magic Johnson was 6'10 by today's standards (w/ shoes). Enough said. He's a once a century type. Rondo is awesome but now that he's set to start making over $10 mil/yr and the Big 3 are nearing their end, is he going to be able to lead his team along with a dominant big past LeBron or Durant or Roy in a few years? I'm not saying that you can't ever win a championship with a great PG, just that it seems to be the exception to the rule. If you have a "true" PG and he ends up representing one of your 2 highest salary figures, you are probably misallocating your resources unless he is very, very special - like Magic Johnson special. As you stated, unless you have a Kobe, Jordan, etc... it's really hard to win a championship. That's my point. There always seems to be a dominant wing popping up over the last few decades that trumps the most dominant PGs of their day. Would it surprise anybody to see LeBron win 2, 3, 4 or more championships before the end of his career? It's no guarantee but it wouldn't suprise me one bit, esp. with Kobe and the Spurs in the twilight of their runs. Will Durant, another up-and-coming wing, be able to go all the way at some point? When one wing goes (Jordan), the next one steps up (Kobe). Now, it's probably LeBron and Durant, maybe Roy. Maybe the talent pool will always produce dominant wings that trump the most dominant PGs because of their physical advantages as well as their ability to typically handle PG duties?
I say Big, and Wing. In 95 when Jordan returned he didnt have a good player in the PF position, in his championships, had Grant (91-93) and Rodman (96-98). he had Pippen in 95, and he couldnt get to the NBA Finals. In 95, Hakeem needed it a wing in drexler, but in 94 didnt ( It was an exception of the rule) Kobe without Gasol or Shaq couldnt win a championship. Gasol in Memphis, couldnt win anything in the playoffs.
Good points. If I had to rank the importance of positions, it would be the following: 1. Bigs 2. Wings 3. PG So, basically, PG is the least important position, generally speaking, with very few exceptions. Looking at some of the very mediocre PGs on several championship teams over the years, it's not that unbelievable of a statement. You almost never find a championship team that doesn't have a super elite wing or big or both but you will find plenty of examples of teams with average or below average PGs. This flies in the face of all the clamoring for great PGs that we hear about not only on this site but throughout the basketball world.
Seems to me that you only really need an exceptional point guard when you don't have wings or bigs that can create for themselves. I mean, why do you need a guy whose primary function is to get guys the ball in a scoring position if you already have guys that can get in scoring position on their own? Wing + Big is the best formula for success.
