Like you said if we went with my ridiculous Dwight Howard example that we then might as well get rid of positions and instead measure players on their roles, but are those two that different? Like Eddy Curry when he was healthy averaged 6 rebounds which was awful for his role/position of center. Versus when a PG like Chris Paul averages nearly 6 rebounds we are correctly impressed. And if a PG doesn’t rebound great, we don’t tend to hold it against him because that’s not required from that position (or role). Likewise, we don’t fault Pau Gasol for not regularly hitting 3-pointers, but if he was a shooting guard we’d say that was a major flaw and it would be reflected in the way everyone ranks him.

Now it doesn’t matter HOW they accumulate stats for that position (ie. if Billups gets assists posting people up versus Chris Paul getting them by blowing past people or doing pick & rolls), but isn’t the way we rank players inherently connected to their particular position and how successful they are at that role? Has there ever been a truly great PG who averaged less than 5 assists? Or a star center/PF who didn’t average at least 7 rebounds?

Anyway, fun debating with you, and good post.

-Alex

Well we’ll have to just wait and see. I was doing the list not soley based off numbers. While Rondo’s numbers may be comparable (somewhat) to that of Brevin Knight, I think common sense would tell you he is superior.

@Alex-

These rankings are based on players that play and are listed at the point guard position. Certainly with these NBA guys being so skilled the lines of what position each guy plays is different. I think the idea is, no matter what the style, how effective are they at playing the position? Tony Parker and Chauncey Billups play totally different, but both are effective in their own way. By making your Dwight Howard hypothetical, we may as well scrap “positions” all together and instead just determine guys based off roles (rebounder, scorer, passer etc) which isn’t a far cry from how thing are desinged now. I was just keeping it traditional with the way guys are listed.

As far as the list is concerned it is based off of only this past season with a little bit of the players history taken into account, which I thought I said somewhere in the post. Any of my speculation of the player for the future had nothing to do with where they stood in the list after this season. For instance, me saying Nash may drop off next season would affect where I have him on the list next season, not this one. He may not drop off at all in which case his spot may be the same.

BD and Gilbert are two seperate cases. For BD, while his performance last season was indeed poor, for integrity purposes of the list placing him among the Derek Fishers and Chris Duhon’s of the world. Where I have him slated in my opinion was a “knock” at what he did last season. This was based on my opinion/judgement.

Same goes for Gilbert. He clearly is a better player than Fisher and Duhon despite him not playing. I don’t think it would make things “real” if you had Mario Chalmers ahead of a guy who scored 25ppg two years ago, if that makes sense.

Finally the list was made of performance and opinion. There are plenty of statistical measures out there that would tell us who’s best at what. I was just infusing some of my own opinion into where I thought these guys may actually be rank wise.

It’s also a little unclear if you’re measuring the PGs based on how they are now(or at the end of last season), versus once the upcoming season is done. ‘Cuz you say like Nash is going to eventually slip a bit this year or that Rose will take the next step, which seem to be reflected in your rankings. Versus say Calderon you mention you think will take a step up, but you don’t change his ranking. Does that make sense? I guess I’m asking is this ranking based on how players were at the end of last season, or how you think they WILL BE this upcoming season. I assume it’s not based on how they were ‘cuz then like Arenas would be dead last. So if it’s about how they will be this season, then it seems odd to say you think Calderon will climb this chart — shouldn’t you just list him where you think he will be? Or with Baron or Arenas, don’t you need to pick a side and decide whether they’ll be able to come back? You’re kinda going half-and-half with them saying they sucked last year (obviously true) but maybe they’ll be better this year so I’m grading them somewhere in the middle. Like personally I think Baron will be healthy and inspired this year and be a top ten PG. However if I was someone who didn’t feel he’d be inspired&healthy, I’d probably rank him as a bottom 5 PG (like he was last year). Either be on the BoomDizzle or Agent Zero train or call them the wrecks you think they’ll be. Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but isn’t that the whole fun of debating stuff like this?

-Alex
FullyClips.com

If Arenas had played last year I’d probably have him better than at 10.

12, 8 and 5 is okay, looks like Brevin Knight numbers. His defense is not impressive, he just constantly gambles. Rondo isn’t a bad defender, but he’s not some defensive stud that people have been making him out to be. He’s a great fit on Boston, but not a great player.

But I disagree about Rondo. For these reasons:

I wasn’t basing his place among the rankings solely on that playoff series, but lets be real here, he did nearly average a triple double.

Secondly take a look at his regular season numbers. He averaged 12, 8 and 5 with just about 2 steals per game. And that’s not even taking into account the times he’s harassed guys into throwing away a pass to another Celtic.

After Paul and Deron the guys in the top 10 are all pretty interchangeable so its really splitting hairs.

I have a hard time putting Rose ahead of him though, at least right now, considering head to head I believe Rondo had the better series not to mention better reg. season for a better team.

As far as the other three, Arenas, BD and Calderon. BD maybe at some point, but off last years season there is no way you can put him ahead of Rondo. Calderon the same goes, the Raptors got significantly worse since he became full time starter. Not all his fault, but you can’t put him ahead of Rondo. And Arenas has played 15 games in two years, just based off that he can not be among the top 10.