NBA Power Rankings: Ranking All 30 Starting Point Guards

1.  Chris Paul — Los Angeles Clippers

Passer Rating:  184.80 (1st)

Per-36 minutes:  19.7 points, 10.6 assists, 4.7 rebounds, 2.0 steals, 2.4 turnovers.  48.5% field goals, 39.8% 3-pointers, 90% free throws.

True Shooting Percentage:  59.6% (2nd)

Player Efficiency Rating:  26.04 (3rd)

Real Plus-Minus:  +6.92 (3rd)

Wins Above Replacement:  16.75 (2nd)

For some people — writers, fans, and maybe even league coaches and players — this almost feels similar to hanging on to a past relationship. When your spouse wants to end ties with you, but you just keep gripping on to something that isn’t there. For comparison, it’s becoming evident that only a few are sticking with this sacred belief — Chris Paul is still, after 10 seasons, the NBA’s most artistic point guard.

He leads with unmatched aesthetics, commits on both ends of the court in such vehement fashion, and still draws inequitable criticism for his team’s playoff shortcomings.

Paul is the NBA’s Dominic Toretto, who never flounders in knowing how to supervise a group that may be lost without him. Toretto is the street demon of Los Angeles, valuing family and rich treasures. Paul relishes being Hollywood’s greatest floor commander since Magic Johnson. Both operate in fifth gear, with Toretto’s being speed and Paul’s solely on his zeal. There isn’t an ounce of his limited, 6’0″ body that he hasn’t laid on the line for his professional career. There isn’t a teammate he hasn’t augmented, a play that hasn’t consumed his heart with adrenalized vigor, or a coach that hasn’t revered him.

Stephen Curry has the elegant offensive touch that intoxicates any crowd. Russell Westbrook embraces the nonpareil athleticism that makes you weep in the locker room after every matchup.

Chris Paul has the unmitigated package. Of everything. He doesn’t depend on athleticism anymore, at 30 years old. He doesn’t rely exclusively on the outside shooting touch to make him unguardable. But above all else, nobody has ever dared label Paul as a one-way player.

Although there were 11 starting point guards higher than Paul in Defensive Real Plus-Minus last season, there isn’t one point guard out there better as a two-way terminator. DRPM tries to eradicate the team aspect of defensive capability and reflect only the individual, but it still fails to do it completely. Hence, how the Clippers’ pedestrian team defense (15th in defensive rating, allowing over 105.5 points and 25 assists per 100 possessions) held Paul’s rating below where it should be.

When he’s patrolling the backcourt — even during the early minutes of a game — Paul will be the reason opposing coaches scream at their players. He’s a goddamned nuisance regardless what you do, and it’s like the buzzing fly that won’t quit circling your face while eating.

One play encapsulates Paul’s significance to the Clippers, and any organization he ever plays for:

Find me a point guard with Paul’s size that desires battling for a rebound against three frontcourt players. Find me one that will actually SECURE the board, and then be unselfish and modest enough to kick it out for a 3-pointer … instead of going for the second-chance score himself. Find me a point guard that ALWAYS knows where everyone is on the floor, while also seeing fastbreak plays two steps ahead of anyone else. Find me one that puts 110% of his energy (in the first quarter) to intercept an outlet pass, and then attack the whole defense himself.

There are moments when you can see Paul’s glaring strengths, almost as clearly as someone slapping you in the face. Being a verbal extension of his coach on the floor is one thing, but to anticipate the action before the head coach even sees it, is enough to make me walk out of the room sometimes:

Paul knows when to cheat off corner shooters without it being too deadly. As a result of being the most consummate passer in the league, Paul knows when others are setting up for a pass. They often forget that part — he has the timing down to a tee. He jumps passing routes better than most athletes are able to, because it’s actually 90% mental and 10% physical. Sure, being a freak of nature helps on the takeoff. But I’ll take a superior brain and attention to detail over the fastest 40-yard-dash time and leaping vertical.

One of the more imposing features of Paul’s defensive heart is simple:  He doesn’t back down from immense challenges, or ones that he’s not comfortable taking on. Well-suited for the job or not, he doesn’t gripe about it. And if it fails (which is going to happen against the most gifted scorers on Earth), he doesn’t use the mismatch as an excuse. But you’d be surprised at how frequently it works, if the Clippers have no other options for guarding insane players:

Or, how about when Paul finds himself in even harder situations? I know, “What can be harder than trying to keep your composure against Durant?”

Well, there are many occasions when Paul is involved in a 2-on-1 or even 3-on-1 fastbreak for the opponent. Since he’s usually at the top of the key, that happens. To any point guard. However, he welcomes it. Almost as if the challenge brings him this sick, barbarous pleasure:

He’s one sadistic human being when it comes to retrieving a possession. DeAndre Jordan is the only teammate of CP3’s that I’ve ever heard to reportedly “dislike” playing with him. You would think Jordan would appreciate having a point guard that isn’t a pushover on defense, and one that’s going to repeatedly let guards slip through LA’s defensive cracks. The truth is, having Paul there to help has elevated Jordan’s defensive status as well.

One could also use logical reasoning to suggest that Paul’s defensive game has taken a step back since he’s getting older. However, that would be a huge fallacy. Paul’s defensive win shares last year (3.2) were right on par with his last three seasons as a Clipper. From age 26 to 30, he hasn’t missed a beat in defending the world’s most unbelievable athletes — even as the league gets more infested with speed.

Where Paul’s greatness truly shimmers, though, is with his offensive virtuosity.

Being able to play in all 82 games last year (the first time in his career), Paul generated a superb 1,905 points off assists. It came to 24.5 per game, the most of any NBA player. In terms of his play-making combined with his scoring, Paul was also responsible for 35.3 points per game for the Clippers in three total areas:  close range production, catch-and-shoot finishes, and pull-up finishes. As a whole, the Clippers generated 56.4 points in those three respects — so, Paul was responsible for over 62% of it.

A critical point of analysis for a point guard is one that I calculated on my own this summer:  The percentage of a team’s passes per game that come from Player X – the percentage of a team’s turnovers per game from Player X’s “bad passes.”

It wasn’t a shocker, but Paul was the league’s runner-up in this new metric when I tested it for all players. He accounted for 23.8% of Los Angeles’ passes on a nightly basis, and only 11.5% of their turnovers via his errant passes. That gave him a difference of 12.3, behind only Kemba Walker. It’s primarily because Walker was extremely careful with his decisions as a passer last year, although Paul still made a lot more passes for his offense.

Paul also led the league in secondary assists, or “hockey assists” per 100 possessions. He racked up nearly 3 on a per 100 basis, while nobody else on the list broke the 1.9 mark.

In terms of bad pass turnover percentage, Paul’s 5.1% was the 4th-lowest in the league. Only Kemba, Kyrie Irving, and George Hill had lower figures, but Paul’s should be valued a bit more. He distributes a lot more passes on a nightly basis than those three, so the natural law of numbers suggests that he’ll have more “bad” passes under his belt.

Paul’s impact on the Clippers is mostly shown through the team’s overall performance.

With Paul off the floor last season, Los Angeles’ assist percentage was 60.1% — not bad, and exactly how Rivers wants them to play. But with Paul on the floor, it rose to 63.7% — giving Paul a difference of +3.6. No other point guard had a rating quite that high, with Deron Williams and Ty Lawson being the only ones above 3%.

(Oh god, another D-Will & CP3 comparison from ages ago!)

The Clippers’ difference in field goal percentage was simply unheard of. At the end of the day, it’s also the most revealing number for determining how important a point guard is for the team. If your teammates are shooting significantly worse when you’re on the bench … it means you’re looking to tell your coach, “Get my a** back in the game.”

When Paul ran the offense last season, the Clippers were shooting 55.4% in effective field goal percentage. That’s higher than the league-leading Warriors shot in eFG (54%).

Put CP3 on the bench, and everything went downhill rapidly. They only shot 47.5% in eFG during Paul’s resting minutes, giving him a difference of +7.9%. Only one other point guard sniffed that type of impact difference, and that was Stephen Curry.

Everyone else was below the 5% mark, meaning they didn’t have the same type of influence on how great their teams shot. But that’s exactly what Paul and Curry do. They create the very best opportunities for everyone around them, while also being efficient gods themselves. It’s a lose-lose situation when playing against them, because one small crack in the defense and they’ll embarrass the victim. If you guard them too tightly, they’ll deliver to a teammate for a high-percentage look. If you sag off too much, there’s a step-back jumper ripping your heart out.

What makes Paul the most unique point guard in the game, though, is that he defies the odds.

The odds say you shouldn’t fire away mid-range jumpers. The odds say it’s rarely a good thing to run the shot clock down into single digits, only to take a contested shot away from the rim.

Chris Paul doesn’t give a damn about odds, and he never has. Odds also said he wasn’t supposed to become an all-time great at just 6-foot, or beat Gregg Popovich in the first round.

Not only is Paul the best mid-range shooter out of the starting point guards, but nobody else in the league would be more trusted from 15-22 feet. For as unbelievable of a shooter Curry has proven to be, it’s Paul who completely massacres the mid-range style of attack.

There’s no answer for Paul when he’s forcing the defense to make a decision. Either commit to him fully and not leave him space (which means he’ll blow by you), or leave him room. A lot of players and teams still leave him room, for some reason.

The case is the same when he’s working the pick-and-roll. Paul scored 678 of his points last year off plays in which he was the ball-handler in screen-roll situations. It wasn’t as many points as Lillard (689), but he was insanely more efficient in doing so:

Field goal percentage off pick-and-roll plays:

• Parker — 50%
• Paul — 49.6%
• Curry — 46.5%
• Teague — 45.4%
• Bledsoe — 45.3%
• Irving — 43.9%
• Lawson — 43.2%
• Lillard — 40.3%
• Wall — 40.2%
• Westbrook — 39%
• Walker — 38.9%

There is no containing Paul, even when you think you’re contesting him:

As he moves into the latter stages of his under-appreciated career, Paul is focusing on two things. Without championship hardware, he would go down as the greatest guard to never win “the big one.” He can’t let that happen. So that’s the first order of business, with a more balanced bench unit to back him up.

Secondly, he’ll look to keep pushing his name up the list of historical figures at the point guard position. As he climbs higher into the list of 50 Greatest Players this game has witnessed, Paul will do so with the most lionized competitive spirit of all little men.

As a scorer, his game is maturing. As a passer, his flair is nothing short of meticulous. As a teammate, his demanding nature is always for the right intentions.

He’s Chris Paul, maintaining the throne for one more year.