No. He can't guard other PG's. Especially quick ones. Especially coming off of microfracture surgery. I don't think Ron could either. We've had this debate before (it seems like there's one of these threads every couple of months). Inevitably, someone will suggest that we play someone like Lowry at SG and have TMAC as the PG so that Lowry can guard the other teams PG on defense. But essentially, that's just TMAC running the offense from the SG position which is what he had been doing for the past few years anyway. You could start saying TMAC is the PG but it'd really be the same thing we've been doing. Sorry, I wanted to preemptively counter this argument because I know we'd get around to it eventually.
If we have someone else bring the ball up every time around this could be a possibility but when you have him playing the 1 spot on offense, his defense would be much more suspect unless Battier was able to guard him. That said he's the best passer on this team and has a lot of court vision but I'm not sure if I'd want put the pressure on him to lead the team every single play. I think we attempted to use this strategy on numerous occasions but he's always going to take nights off, so do you really want your PG to play only when he wants to? In a franchise player, who makes the most money, you would hope he's the one that sets the bar for everyone else following, to try and achieve. I think once he was out of the lineup, Battier and Artest stepped up respectively and inspired the team to overachieve against the Fakers.
