Best Young Point Guard
 

There's been an ongoing discussion on the main baseball board about who is the best young point guard in the NBA now. Interestingly enough, ESPN just came out with an article about that today, so I thought it was a good opportunity to move that discussion over here.

ESPN asked 15 NBA executives which point guard on a rookie contract they would want to build a team around. It's not a surprise to me who was their first choice but I didn't expect the consensus to be that decisive.

The executives ranked six young point guards. From East to West they are: Ball, Young, Garland, Morant, Doncic and Gilgeous-Alexander. Here is a link to the article:

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...floor-generals

Good timing for this article!


It looks like they polled "scouts and executives"... although it doesn't indicate how many of which make up their 15.

It doesn't surprise me that they all chose either Doncic (11) or Morant (4). I would be in the Morant camp myself.

Doncic has been pretty much a one man team his whole career so far. It's a shame Porzingis could never get healthy. It is amazing that Doncic is leading the Mavs into contention with the roster they've got.

I've been trying to figure out a good comp for Doncic and I think the best is Oscar Robertson. Both big strong point guards, they can post up, rebound and defend.

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All fair points, Al. Interesting to note that both Dallas and Memphis are currently outperforming preseason expectations, but the Grizzlies are doing it by a much higher margin. And the Memphis roster isn't exactly an All-Star team either...

ESPN Preseason Predictions (Win %)
Mavs 58.5%
Griz 51.2%

Current
Mavs 61.5%
Griz 67.2%

Both great young players.

I think Luka is definitely the more well rounded player of the two. His defensive metrics and size over Ja give him a leg up in the comparison.

I think Luka is, what he is right now. I think he's at his ceiling (it's a hell of a ceiling).

Morant has shown improvements since he's come into the league, and I think he has room to become much better.

Neither has proven to be an iron-man.

I think long-term, Ja Morant profiles somewhere between Damian Lillard and a young Derrick Rose.

Luka...might be sacrilegious to say...but I think he's a poor man's Magic Johnson (definitely not a dig), with less scoring help from his team-mates. I'm struggling to think of another PG with a similar mix of size, rebounding, passing, and scoring efficiency. Gorditadogg mentioned Oscar Robertson, but I was trying to think of somebody a little more modern.

Maybe hybrid James Harden with less flopping and more defense?

Yeah, I think the most optimistic view of Luka is a poor man's Magic or LeBron (agreed that this is not a dig). A less optimistic (but still very good) comp is a bigger and better Tony Parker.

Doncic is 1st team All-NBA again. He is the first to get 3 1st team selections in the 1st 4 years since Tim Duncan. Of course Duncan got 8 in a row starting with his rookie year, so Luka has a long way to go to match Old Man Riverwalk.

Still, LeBron didn't get his 3rd 1st team selection until his 6th year in the league and Durant got his in his 5th year.