NBA Power Rankings: All 30 Starting Shooting Guards
By Shane Young
19. Eric Gordon — New Orleans Pelicans
Not once did anyone imagine moving from Los Angeles to New Orleans would be horrible for Gordon’s career.
During his third season with the Clippers, Gordon was on the brink of stardom, ranking 13th in the league in scoring at 22.3 points per game. That was, of course, before he went down with injuries and only played 56 games.
Heading to New Orleans, Gordon has only played in 115 of 230 games in the past three years. In early 2012, Gordon decided to have arthroscopic surgery on his knee, forcing him to miss a long period of time.
Just this past season, Gordon was injured in March after feeling knee tendinitis, and that forced another surgery. The following month, he had another arthroscopic surgery, ruling him out of the final month of play. This time, though, his left knee was the one facing problems. In 2012, his right knee was the problem, meaning he’d had surgeries on both legs.
As we’ve seen from arthroscopic surgeries, sometimes the player returns fresh, and similar to new. Russell Westbrook experienced it last Winter, and he still has all of his athleticism and jumping ability. It really does depend on a player-by-player basis, since some respond to the operations differently than others.
Last season, Gordon did rank 11th of all shooting guards (playing at least 30 minutes per game) in outside shooting. At 39.1 percent 3-point efficiency, Gordon set a career-high in an area he’s been up and down in throughout his six years in the league.
Not having a ton of production in passing, Gordon still has good vision and deliveries off screen rolls. It especially helps when you have a franchise-changing power forward cooperating with you:
Gordon is also intelligent enough on the court to use the pick-and-roll as a decoy, and head coach Monty Williams does a fabulous job of drawing up plays for guys on the weak side. Defensively, Gordon could have trouble keeping up with some of the league’s quicker guards if his knee problems linger, but he has enough speed as it is to remain a threat.
The injuries held him back. Once that stops (if it can), New Orleans has enough scoring and defensive power in the middle with Davis to march to the Western Conference Playoffs. Nobody likes the probability of it, however.