As the 2018-19 NBA season creeps closer, it’s time to rank all 30 projected starting point guards in the league based on the upcoming campaign.
The dog days of the NBA summer are in full effect, and since August is as good a time as any to argue about arbitrary rankings, it’s time to dive right into some pointless, unsolvable debates by ranking every projected starting point guard in the association.
With the 2018-19 NBA season slowly creeping closer, team depth charts aren’t even official yet. For example, there are a number of rookies who could start the year coming off the bench before losses start piling up and it makes more sense to let the youngsters learn on the fly while the team tanks the season away.
For our purposes, we’ll be taking a look at the 30 players who should wind up spending the majority of the upcoming season at the starting point guard position, assuming everyone stays healthy (which, of course, is unfortunately never the case). As the week progresses, we’ll take a look at every other position on the floor too.
So what factors go into these rankings? There is no advanced algorithm predicting stat lines or wins added or anything like that; just good old fashioned rankings based on the players’ stats from last year, impact on their teams, fit with their current teams, opportunity, team success, propensity for injury and a myriad of other factors.
This isn’t based on fantasy output or contract value or Value Over Replacement Player or anything like that; this is simply one writer’s projections for the overall on-court value of the 30 players expected to start most of the season at point guard for the upcoming 2018-19 campaign — ranked from worst to best — in an effort to generate discussion.
Let’s dive right in, preferably saving the hate mail for the very end.
NOTE: This piece has been updated to reflect the Phoenix Suns’ trade of Brandon Knight to the Houston Rockets, which changes the Suns’ projected starting point guard.