It’s possible to build a successful NBA point guard with videotape, hard work and old-fashioned coaching. Teach him the finer points. Show him what to do in certain situations. Talk to him about the all-time greats. It has worked.

Sort of. Experience may be a great instructor, but there is no substitute for the hard-wired, knows-it-already floor leader, the guy who never makes the wrong decision. Who shoots when the time is right and fills his teammates’ hands with timely, well-placed passes.

“You can help,” says Milwaukee coach Scott Skiles, himself a former point man. “You can look at tape and stop practice and ask ‘What were you thinking here?’ But the guys who make the great decisions, you see that when they’re small kids, and they’re one step ahead of everyone else. You can make progress, but to be a great decision-maker is to have a gift.”

The NBA has always valued the man with the ball in his hands. Give coaches a choice of any position on the floor, and they’ll almost always choose the point guard. That’s who runs the team and makes sure the coach’s will gets done.

To say the NBA is undergoing a renaissance at the point position would be unfair to those players who ran teams in the 1990s and earlier part of this century. There is no denying, though, that the emergence of New Orleans’ Chris Paul, Deron Williams of the Jazz and San Antonio’s Tony Parker has given the league a top tier at the position that ranks among the best ever. Paul, Williams, Parker and (Chicago hopes) Derrick Rose have taken the standard from the league’s more established points like Jason Kidd, Andre Miller, Chauncey Billups and even Steve Nash and are clearly establishing themselves as the premier players in the league.

“The good thing about them is that they are always looking for opportunities to create,” Portland coach Nate McMillan says. “A good point guard creates opportunities, and when an opening arises, he shoots or passes after making the right decision. These guys do that.”

After only three years, Paul is the best of the bunch, especially after the season he just unfurled for the surprising Bugs. He scored 21.1 points per game and handed out 11.6 assists, accounting for about 45 percent of New Orleans’ production. In only his fourth year, Paul has established himself as a full-fledged star in the making. “He has great quickness and can get into the paint and finish,” Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy says. “He’s got a bunch of shots in there. Plus, he makes good decisions.”

Those decisions are the backbone of any successful team, because the ability to run set offenses in the NBA is largely a myth. It may happen early in the year, when coaches are still trying to figure out what their squads’ identities will be. As the season moves on, and opponents begin to prepare for specific schemes and strategies, the ability to stick to an offensive script disappears, and the mandate to make the right choices every time down based on what a defense presents is vital. 

A team that has a dependable point guard in that situation is at a huge advantage. Instead of worrying about how his team will handle various circumstances that arise, a coach can be secure in the fact that the lead man will work reliably within the flow of the game.

In an offense like that of new Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni, which thrives on open-court chaos and requires a commitment to getting up many shots quickly, the point man is vital. When he started at Phoenix with 61 games left in the ’03-04 season, D’Antoni was unable to get the Suns to flow smoothly within his attack. It wasn’t until Nash showed up the next year that things really started to crackle. Nash’s ability to lead the team and choose wisely in almost every situation took Phoenix to a level few could have imagined.

The Jazz underwent a similar adjustment period after the retirement of John Stockton, one of the best ever at the point position. Injuries played a part in Utah’s slide from playoff contention, but the lack of a reliable point guard was a huge contributing factor. When the Jazz drafted Williams in ’05, the turnaround began.

“He’s bigger and stronger than a lot of point guards,” Dunleavy says. “He gets in there and can take the ball to the rim while handling more contact. He also has better shooting range than (Paul and Parker).”

Two years ago, Williams teamed with Carlos Boozer to lead the Jazz to the Western Conference Finals, creating a 21st-century version of the Stockton/Karl Malone duo that helped Utah play such a prominent role in the West throughout the ’90s. And that brings to mind basketball’s continuing dependence on the pick-and-roll, one of the sport’s oldest plays. Because of the need for adaptation in half-court offenses, rather than a reliance on set plays, the pick-and-roll remains a staple because “there’s still not a right way of guarding it,” McMillan says. Watch any NBA game, and you’ll see one similarity: When the shot clock gets below 10 seconds, the pick-and-roll almost always comes into play. In Portland, when the clock hits eight, someone shouts “Green!” and a power forward or pivot comes immediately to the ball and sets a screen.

The ability of the point guard to work within that framework, making the right decision and then executing that choice to produce a basket, remains one of the chief job descriptions of the position and what sets the great ones apart from players who just dribble the ball a lot. “If you have a good point guard like Chris Paul, you don’t stop the pick-and-roll,” McMillan says. “It’s just a matter of whether the shot is missed. They’ll get something out of it.”

Utah coach Jerry Sloan has changed his approach to offensive basketball now that Williams has emerged as one of the league’s best points. The Jazz had been more of a set-offense team over the years, but now he lets the guard and big man Mehmet Okur work the pick-and-roll frequently. It’s a pretty poisonous pairing. If defenses fail to jump Williams, he’s going right to the basket. Thanks to his sturdy frame (6-foot-3, 205), he can handle any of the rough stuff that entails. Jump him, and he’ll kick it to Okur for a three-point try.

The best part of Williams’ work on that play, and that of Paul and Parker (not to mention Nash), is that none of the options available to him — drive, kick, shoot — is chosen before the defense commits. “Whatever mistake the defense makes, they take advantage of it,” McMillan says.

Parker has the benefit of working the pick-and-roll with Tim Duncan, he of the automatic 15-to-17 foot jumper and strong move to the basket off the bounce pass. Parker has another weapon that is even more useful in those situations. Few guards in the league can finish as well in traffic as he can. Though wispy (6-foot-2, 180), Parker thrives among the trees because of his array of runners, floaters and teardrop shots. And should anyone play him for the pull-up, he’ll use his superior quickness to jet right past a defender and hit a layup.

Not that the young point guard brigade is perfect. None is a particularly automatic shooter, although Dunleavy rates Williams the best of the bunch, followed by Paul and Parker. Shooting will come with experience and added strength, and when it does, they’ll be even more deadly. Defensively, each gets kudos, largely because of the ability to use quickness to keep opposing ball-handlers in front of them. Williams gets a little edge in that department as well, largely because he has the strength to muscle some rivals around the court.

The Chicago Bulls may well have found the next in line at the top of the point position. Their drafting of Memphis’ Rose brought a player with a predisposition toward winning first to the franchise. After last year’s debacle, that’s much needed.

While Rose earns his reputation, the players with whom he is being compared continue to improve and distance themselves from their peers. Parker already has three championship rings, and Paul showed this year he’s a threat to take the Hornets to great heights. Williams, meanwhile, has already tasted playoff success. It’s a formidable group, to be sure, and a reason for NBA fans to be excited, especially since they’re in the same conference and will be battling regularly. Others would be smart to pay close attention to what they do.

As if they’ll ever be able to duplicate it.

You can purchase Athlon's 2008-09 Pro Basketball annual here.

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