NBA witnessing a new breed of Point Guards

Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls

Let’s just say the days of Steve Francis, Chauncey Billups, Jason Kidd are over…nowadays to be considered a good point guard one needs to take the mold of a Russell Westbrook or Derrick Rose.

The Point guard position in NBA has really evolved as the game itself has evolved over the past couple of years. Point guards before were only expected to act primarily as distributors. Such pass-first mold was perfectly filled in by Steve Nash during his time, and it is still being perpetuated by the likes of Ricky Rubio, Michael Carter-Williams and Rajon Rondo. Point guards nowadays are still elite passers but to add something on their skills, they have developed the mastery of disrupting the defense with their scoring prowess and aggressiveness. To name a few, Curry, Irving, Westbrook and Paul are the best examples of this new breed of point guards in the NBA.

The evolution of point guards as time passes by has truly been felt in the NBA court. The 2015 NBA finals would be a testament on said dominance of point guards in the league. Golden State Warriors won against Cleveland primarily through the help of the league’s current MVP, Stephen Curry. Curry’s innate point guard abilities and lethal shooting, Golden State was able to snatch victory over King James’ team. Experts believe that the match would be even if only Kyrie Irving, also a superb a superb scorer, shooter and ball-handler, was present during the final’s series. Los Angeles Clippers guard Jamal Crawford shared via bleachreport the edge of the new types NBA point guards. He explained the skills of both Kyrie Irving and Stephen Curry, as one of the many standouts in era of scoring point guards.

“Kyrie gets into the paint a little bit more and finishes with those funky finishes that he does, the Rod Strickland-type finishes. And Steph will let it fly, but they both, Steph can go in there and have some crazy finishes and Kyrie can pull the three off the dribble as well. They both can do it off the dribble, and that’s what makes them both unstoppable.”

At the very moment there is no exact description on what is happening in the NBA as a positional revolution. But one thing is for sure, that this new era of shooting point guards, made the NBA game a lot faster. And in sense it has broken “post-up-first league identity, where the guard brings the ball down and enters it to the big man the majority of the time. In today’s league, the role of guards as scorers is more important than ever before.”