The Birth of the Combo-Guard

By: Bryan Visser

The Washington Wizards have one thing going for them, sweet uni’s. Unfortunately, the tragedy of their new threads is that no one who wears them is any good at playing basketball. I have heard a large amount of criticism of John Wall as the Wizards quickly line themselves up for the first pick in the NBA draft. While there is no doubt that John Wall isn’t playing up to his potential as an athlete, not everything around his unfortunate situation is his fault. The same thing can be said about all of the combo-guards that have emerged in the league. Those players include Wall, Tyreke Evans, Russell Westbrook, and Rajon Rondo.

Depending on the day, these players are either the next big thing in the league or a waste of talent. Some days they shoot too much or too little. The NBA is in an evolutionary period right now, these players are the first stage of this evolution. Their success and failure is largely a result of the circumstances around them as it is their own talent. Let me explain.

1. Rule Changes: John Stockton, Jason Kidd, Gary Payton, and other traditional point guards were necessary in the generation that they played because of the more physical nature of the game. They couldn’t compete physically, so they had to pick their spots carefully and get others involved.

With the removal of hand checks from the game, coaches realized that they could put the best athlete at the point guard position and the combination of quickness and power would lead to easy basket after easy basket.

2. Money: Jordan brand shoes sold 1 billion dollars in product in 2011. No athlete is more marketable than an NBA star. Kobe, Lebron, and Dwayne Wade make 25-30 million dollars a year, but are easily worth two or three times that much. College athletes, if they manage their money well, could live comfortably for their entire lives with one good contract. All of these factors lead the next generation of stars to leave after one year of college.

3. Coaching: Mike Brown, the Lakers head coach, talking about his relationship with Kobe Bryant said “Kobe allows me to coach him”. Is this generation of stars coachable? Has AAU ball, and Kia commercials made these athletes impervious to the wisdom of the world’s best coaches? While there is no doubt that Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson had an unnatural skill at coaching, it isn’t going to come around again. If this generation is waiting for someone to find them the right coach, they will be waiting for so long that they are left sitting on the bench. They have to seek out help. Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant didn’t wait for people to make them great, they actively pursued it.

4. You can’t teach vision: Someone in the front office has to ignore the media when they say the NBA is a “point guard” driven league. The Lakers won two championships with Derek Fisher. While Jason Kidd is still a great point guard, he didn’t carry his team to a title last year. John Stockton is one of the greatest point guards of all time, yet he couldn’t get past the greatest shooting guard of all time.

Great point guards are great because they have amazing ability to see the court one step ahead of everyone else. You can’t teach this, they either have it, or they don’t. As soon as owners and general managers understand this, they will try to stop teaching vision and will hire coaches that can use these players to the best of their abilities, as a versatile shooting guard. Oklahoma City’s coach Scott Brooks has started to make this transition with Russell Westbrook. He is having Westbrook play more and more without the ball in his hands and having Durant initiate the offense. It’s working, the team is winning.

You can’t take the money out of basketball, the league won’t change the rules, and general managers will always be horrible evaluators of the point guard position. The only way for the evolution of these players to continue is to force these college athletes to stay in school. Let the great college coaches prove how one great year isn’t a large enough sample size to prove that Kentucky PG _________ (fill in the blank) is the next Magic Johnson. Staying in school might hurt the players, but it won’t hurt the college game or the NBA. It will make both products much, much better.