Why was CP3 considered the "Point God", and not John Stockton?

[CodeBreaker]

Why was CP3 considered the "Point God", and not John Stockton?

WHY?

[SelfishPlayer]

Magic Johnson...

[bearadonisdna]

Why was CP3 considered the "Point God", and not John Stockton?

WHY?

It’s just his nickname . Like Lebron is the king but Michael Jordan isn’t .

[WestGOAT]

Cause Stockton was even less reliable when it came to ramping up volume scoring when needed in the playoffs. And don't give me this "pure PG" crap, NBA players play to win, not to confirm to some traditional notion of how to play a specific position.

[Jables]

Stockton was never even in the conversation for MVP. He was in Malone's shadow. Regardless obviously neither are the greatest PG, I don't understand the argument for Stockton over Paul regardless.

[dlts20]

It's just a knick name and it's for his era. No one thinks that he's better than Magic or anything

[Raps in 4]

Stockton would probably find the nickname offensive.

[JN61]

Self appointment nickname. Like LeBron's ones.

[Coxy]

Because social media wasn’t invented in the early 90’s.

[Stalwart]

Chris(t) = Appointed

Emmanuel = God

Paul = Small

Put it together. Chistopher Emmanuel Paul is the small appointed god aka the Point God.

Its right there in his name.

[runtmc]

Paul has always been a bit of a darling of the stats crowd -- his advanced metrics have always been fantastic.

For example, his career WS/48 is 4th all time (not counting Neil Johnston, who played in the 50s). The only guys ahead of him are Jordan, David Robinson, and Wilt -- meaning he's ahead of guys like Kareem, Bill Russell, Bird, Magic, Stockton, Duncan, Kobe, Shaq, Lebron, Curry, Durant, Giannis, Jokic etc. Note that WS/48 isn't a cumulative stat either -- it's rate based, so it's not like he has an advantage over the young guys who haven't played as long (if anything, playing longer tends to hurt career rate based stats).

He's also 11th all time in career PER, 11th all time in BPM, 18th in VORP, etc. -- near universally, every advanced stat has him as one of the top players of all time.

I think without the stats crowd lobbying for him for so long, he would be even more underappreciated than he already is. In my opinion, he certainly belongs in the same tier as Magic/Stockton as one of the greatest PG to ever play and a top-20 player ever -- and I think a good case could be made for him being one of the top-10 players all-time, even though his reputation with most people is nowhere *near* that level. I could be wrong, but I think most would put him more in the Gary Payton type mold -- good defensive player, perennial all-star, but not one of the truly greats.

In actuality, he's leagues above Payton when looking at advanced stats/metrics.

I'll use WS/48 to do most of the analysis, just because I generally feel like it's one of the best all-around advanced metrics and it's reasonably unbiased -- and yes, it has bias/issues, but it's pretty good for comparing players across eras, positions, etc.

Anyway, Payton's career WS/48 is .148, which is actually fantastic -- it puts him in the top 100 all time, but it's miles from Paul's career mark of .239 -- for comparison, .148 is on the lowish side for an all-star caliber season, but still solidly in that all-star caliber range, while .239 is first team all-nba/very fringe MVP caliber -- and again, this is what they averaged for their *careers*. In terms of peak, Payton had a peak of .195, Paul .292, which is the difference between a very good all-star/2nd-3rd team All-NBA type season vs a borderline all-time great, clear-cut MVP season.

To that point, Paul was probably robbed of an MVP at least once, if not more: he put up 6 seasons of .270+, which is solid MVP territory, and 9 seasons of .250+, which is low/fringe MVP territory. It's arguably one of the greatest sustained levels of peak play in NBA history -- really only a handful of guys have sustained MVP caliber play that long -- Lebron, Jordan etc. (Jordan, for comparison, has 1 fewer .250+ seasons -- 8 -- but all of them were also .270+, and he has a far higher peak of .322)

And if you talk about guys in the modern NBA, it's really only Lebron that has an argument over Paul -- the rest of the recent greats like say Curry, Durant, Dirk, Duncan, Kobe, Shaq etc. just don't really compare in terms of sustained MVP level play. Curry for example has just 2 seasons at .270+ and 3 at .250+ (though he has a higher peak). Kobe has 0 of either, Shaq has 1 .270+ and 4 .250+, Durant has 4 .270+ and 5 .250+ (and also has a higher peak by a hair at .295), Duncan has 0 .270+ and 1 .250+ (though 2 more that are .248+), Dirk had 2 .270+ and 2 .250+ (again, 2 more .248+) -- basically, all these guys that are the greats of the last 20-30 years other than Lebron have just a few seasons at a .250+ level -- only Durant has more than 4 -- while Paul 9 such seasons, 6 of which were .270+ and even 3 at .280+.

Again, that's pretty nuts to think about -- Paul has more .270+ seasons than anyone on that list has .250+ seasons, and as many .270+ seasons as any 2 of those guys. Even Lebron only has 4 seasons of .270+, 5 at .250+ -- although that said, Lebron's 4 best seasons were all .298+, all of which were better than Paul's peak, and Lebron has 8 seasons that are .240+. But aside from Lebron, no other player in recent years comes even close to touching the longevity of Paul's peak.

So anyhow, yeah, that's a short (but certainly not complete) analysis using some advanced stats to show why Paul is criminally underrated and is actually one of the best players of all-time, he basically played a full decade at MVP level, and hence, why he's got the point god nickname (by the way, for reference, Magic: 1 season of .270+, 4 .250+, Stockton, 0 of either, though Stockton did put up 14 seasons of .200+ -- basically high all-star/low All-NBA caliber, he just never really came close to MVP level).

And one last thing to note: Paul, this season, at age 36, still put up a .210 -- at age 36, he's still putting up a season better than the *best* season of Payton's career, who is a top 75-100 all time player -- let that sink in a bit.

[BK_2020]

Because Stockton padded his stats with entry passes to Malone.

[ellobo]

Why is Pete Maravich called "pistol" and not Gilbert Arenas?

Why is Karl Malone called "The Mailman" and not all the guys Bob Cousy played against?