"What the hell happened to Steve Francis?"-June 2010 SLAM Magazine article

http://dc.sbnation.com/2010/8/10/16...n-dc-basketball-greatest-players-kevin-durant

Oh yea, Francis also told SLAM that he was "the best point guard in the League from 2002 to 2005." Really now? It's times like this we should thank the database at Basketball-Reference.com. Taking those who played mostly guard from the 2002-03 season (when Francis played in 81 games and led the NBA with 299 total turnovers) to the 2004-05 season (filtering those who played more than 200 games during this time), weeding out those who didn't primarily play point guard, and organizing the remaining by PER (in parens), you are left with this list:

1. Sam Cassell (21.7)
2. Steve Nash (21.7)
3. Allen Iverson (21.5)
4. Stephon Marbury (20.8)
5. Jason Kidd (20.6)
6. Chauncey Billups (19.3)
7. Gilbert Arenas (19.0)
8. Mike Bibby (18.8)
9. Steve Francis (18.4)

Not too insinuate that PER is the end-all, be-all for measuring top players, but in using it as perhaps the 'best' measurement out there, Francis barely cracks the top 10 NBA point guards over that 3-year span. BTW, see who's tied for first? A guy, Sam Cassell, from Francis' own D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area. Also, a case could be made to include Iverson in the area too.

Simply put, trying to compare Francis to worthy others, whether it's done statistically or through accolades, he loses. Did you know that using the span of Basketball-Reference's database (from 1946-47 to 2009-10), only one player in NBA history, who primarily played guard, appeared in over 500 games during his first seven seasons in the league, had more than 1,900 turnovers and shot less than .450 from the field? Yep, Francis did that. Not exactly winning point guard numbers.