NBA History: Ranking the 15 greatest point guards of all time

15 greatest point guards in NBA History — No. 15: Tony Parker

The San Antonio Spurs won the 1999 NBA title primarily on the backs of their twin towers, Tim Duncan and David Robinson, with Avery Johnson running point. Two years later, they drafted a teenage French point guard named Tony Parker, who very quickly supplanted Johnson in the starting lineup and never looked back.

Parker would play 1,254 regular season games for the Spurs over the next 17 seasons, and even more impressively a whopping 226 postseason games. That included five runs to the NBA Finals and four titles as the Spurs’ starting point guard. As Robinson aged out the Spurs rotated a lot of players in and out of the lineup over their two decades of contention, and the trio of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili was the constant.

Six times Tony Parker was named to an All-Star team, and four times he made an All-NBA team. He finished top-10 in MVP voting four times, including a fifth-place finish in 2011-12. He ranks 19th in career assists and sixth in career assists in the playoffs; he’s 11th in playoff total scoring as well. In 2007 he won Finals MVP as the Spurs swept the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Parker just missed the Top-75 list we put together last fall, but he would have made a Top-80 list. He was talented, reliable and part of one of the greatest NBA dynasties ever — a team that continued to win at a high level for years and years and years. Would Parker have seen so much success without Duncan and Ginobili? No, but he shouldn’t be penalized for it either. Parker takes the 15th and final spot in our definitive point guard rankings.