NBA Power Rankings: All 30 Starting Shooting Guards

8.  Joe Johnson — Brooklyn Nets

First and foremost, is it comical that Brooklyn is likely a non-playoff team and they have three starters you look at as potential stars?

Seriously, Johnson, Deron Williams, and Brook Lopez all are 20-point per game scorers when they’re at their best, and they haven’t been able to collectively avoid the plague for one year.

Johnson still seen his better days live and die in Atlanta, and only one can wonder how much more success he could’ve had if the Hawks surrounded him with a different cornerstone teammate than Josh Smith.  Brooklyn’s 33-year-old won’t lose his ball-handling techniques, blazing outside hand, or hard-nosed mentality.

Above all else, doesn’t Johnson still own the clutch gene majority of the time?  He did get outright stripped and broken down by Miami in the final seconds of Game 5 this May, but there’s no other player Jason Kidd wanted the ball to go to in those scenarios.

Johnson can struggle to reach 20 points when he’s gunning at the wrong time, or he can be the hottest shooter in the universe.  Thus, look up the definition of inconsistent and you may find 30 percent of Johnson’s face.  You won’t see all of it, because he still always makes his presence felt, but sometimes you’re left wondering “Where are you, Cool Joe?”

There’s only three or four guards I can remember in NBA HISTORY that could manage to explode for 29 points in a third quarter, and 90 percent of those are retired.  Johnson did it last season against the worst defense the NBA supplied in Philadelphia, but nailing the shots is a hard feat against any opponent.

Johnson has been through 13 long seasons with four different teams, but he just put up his second best year in terms of perimeter shooting.  Only twice has he shot over 40 percent from the outside, and last year could be considered his absolute best.  During the 2004-05 campaign with Phoenix, he attempted 4.5 triples and shot 47.8 percent, which is ungodly.  But, most recently, he attempted even more triples (5.1) and shot right at 40 percent.  Both years hovered around the 16 point per game mark, so it’s tough to tell which one elevates over the other.

Still with four or five more years left scoring in double digits and forcing defenders to keep their ankles intact, Johnson is still one of the 10 deadliest shooting guards we have.  Doubting that would only disrespect everything he’s had to fight through to reach the playoffs …. only to be knocked out in the first two rounds.