I think we have reached a point where scoring guards who are not all star level don't have a lot of value anymore.

[tsherkin]

I know I just love that meme…

It IS a good one.

[Threezus]

I don't know about that now i would say Dyson Daniels with his elite defense albeit not an allstar was extremely valuable to the Hawks this season

[cupcakesnake]

I've been screaming for a decade or more that this player archetype doesn't help teams win games.

Buckets are by far the most visible thing in basketball, but winning at basketball is so much more complicated. If you just get buckets, but don't contribute to all the less visible, more complicated stuff (defense, off-ball offense, screening, cutting, playmaking) you're a paper tiger.

These guards will win 6MOY or even all-star nods, while their on/off numbers bleed red into the negative year after year. These guys almost always suck in the playoffs.

Hopefully teams are finally starting to accept what should have been obvious for a long time.

[cupcakesnake]

This is why Jalen Green got dumped. He got that contract due to his youth and potential. But as a player he's overpaid.

Watching him clearly be the worst player in the playoffs, on a team starved for scoring and spacing, was just the latest example of these guys being overvalued. Redistribute his minutes to Tari, Amen, Brooks, Jabari... well that would have been a very ugly series but I think the Rockets win it.

He didn't help the Rockets score against Golden State, but he did make their defense worse. I think there's no way the Rockets score more in that series, but had they choked Golden State by even a point more per 100 possessions, they win that series.

[tsherkin]

I've been screaming for a decade or more that this player archetype doesn't help teams win games.

Buckets are by far the most visible thing in basketball, but winning at basketball is so much more complicated. If just get buckets, but don't contribute to all the less visible, more complicated stuff (defense, off-ball offense, screening, cutting, playmaking) you're a paper tiger.

People are simple. Players and fans alike. As you say, the visible is very clear, but even there, people like to fetishize volume. It's always been true that efficiency was better than inefficiency, for example, even if the particulars of what is and is not efficient has changed over the decades. Low-efficiency gunners have only so much value, and even less when they do basically nothing else besides shoot, and then disappoint in the playoffs.

He didn't help the Rockets score against Golden State, but he did make their defense worse. I think there's no way the Rockets score more in that series, but had they choked Golden State by even a point more per 100 possessions, they win that series.

Indeed. He's hovered around what was league-average efficiency in the 2010s for his entire career, with no real arc of improvement. He suuuucks. Below average from 3, crap beyond 3 feet inside the arc. 8th in the league in dribbles per touch among guys who played 40+ games, 10th in average seconds per touch. Fully "let me deflate the ball with all my dribbling, but don't worry, I won't make plays for others like the other guys on that list" with weak size and bleh defense.

Such an awful archetype.

[Crazy-Canuck]

We are seeing it in real time. They are taking pennies in the FA market. I dont think anyone of this archtype is getting more than 10M/yr while the ones on a line contract are getting dumped for peanuts.

[Lalouie]

i think basically you're talking about a flashpoint where the shooting guard, let's make that 3pt shooting guard, is a commodity where once upon a time it was a luxury. so where you have the incomparable steph curry, other teams now compete with 2 or 3 pretty good 3pt shooters

to make matters worse, we are now volume scoring

as with all things when there is an abundance,,,you can now start to discriminate and hone your selection. shooting ain't enuf. anybody can shoot and it has been shown that anyone can LEARN to shoot.

but THAT GUY over there, can shoot AND play a bit of D too

lillard has become greatly devalued - now he's a "yeah, so what"

[carlquincy]

Disagree to the premise.

Paying $25m+ to any non star player, regardless of position, is always poor value.

[junot111]

Disagree to the premise.

Paying $25m+ to any non star player, regardless of position, is always poor value.

Is Myles Turner a star player? He's easily worth 25m

[pepe1991]

Disagree to the premise.

Paying $25m+ to any non star player, regardless of position, is always poor value.

Is Myles Turner a star player? He's easily worth 25m

He is very good player with unique skillset ( shotblocking C who can make 3s ).

There is nothing special about "combo guards" who are only called combo guards because every idiot can rack up 2-3 assists a game if you give him 25% usage rate. They are just miniature shooting guards or averaged size guards not talented enough as passers to be called point guards.

Majority of them aren't that efficient.
Majority of them can't defend that well.
Majority of them don't raise team's floor nor ceiling.
Majority of them just hunt own shots.
Majority of them aren't team players.

I spend half of my life watching Jamal "the 6th man " Crawford in nba. ( literally entered nba when i was 10, exited when i was 30 ) and never once i thought he actually helped win games. In regular season, sure, pure volume of scoring, he would give teams some edge, but in playoffs, on focused and organized defense, he was one of worst black holes you could find. Not good enough to justify on ball action, not that great off ball, questionable decision making, hard regular season shots that vs elite defense won't go in during playoffs and massive liability on defense. As a result, career 49,6% TS player on 26% usage.

Right now teams have massive issues with how they allocate their cap. Due fact every team maxed out their best players, league has massive inflation of "max contract" players that should never make such money. Over time it should level out a bit.
But i would rather pay Turner $25M a year than some combo guard $20M a year.

[carlquincy]

Disagree to the premise.

Paying $25m+ to any non star player, regardless of position, is always poor value.

Is Myles Turner a star player? He's easily worth 25m

Is he a norm or an exception?

[hauntedcomputer]

The Sixth Man of the Year award bizarrely went from valuable, positive players like Bobby Jones, Kevin McHale, Bill Walton, and Detlef Schrempf to inefficient gunners like Lou Williams, Jordan Clarkson, and Jamal Crawford. There was a false value assigned.

Clarkson now is accurately valued as a vet minimum. Someone like Caruso is a far more deserving Sixth Man of the Year.

[Onlytimewilltel]

Disagree to the premise.

Paying $25m+ to any non star player, regardless of position, is always poor value.

Is Myles Turner a star player? He's easily worth 25m

Is he a norm or an exception?

Dude lol. The premise is that inefficient scoring chuckers who don’t offer much else are overvalued. You don’t “disagree with the premise” unless you disagree with that. Which you clearly don’t disagree with that.

[FarBeyondDriven]

and yet teams just drafted them #2 (Harper) and #6 (Johnson) in this year's draft. Plus we've seen teams with guys like this (Herro and Edwards) make deep playoff runs in recent years. The distinction between all-star level and not usually comes down to how good the team is around them.

These types have often and predominantly been on bad teams with no other scoring options so they tend to be inefficient and of course don't contribute to wins. But if they were on better teams they'd be able to play their roles effectively and become all-star level players like Mitchell, Brunson, Beal, Booker, Maxey and McCollum have.

If you put any of these guys on the better teams in the league and gave them similar usage to the guy's there now there would be very little dropoff and those teams would be just as good. It sounds ridiculous but it's really all about usage and surrounding cast.

[Bergmaniac]

The Sixth Man of the Year award bizarrely went from valuable, positive players like Bobby Jones, Kevin McHale, Bill Walton, and Detlef Schrempf to inefficient gunners like Lou Williams, Jordan Clarkson, and Jamal Crawford. There was a false value assigned.

Clarkson now is accurately valued as a vet minimum. Someone like Caruso is a far more deserving Sixth Man of the Year.

This was so annoying, they should have renamed the award to "Most PPG from the bench" award since none of these guys was the most valuable bench player in the league. Clarkson winning was particularly bizarre he wasn't even the best bench player on his own team that year.

[carlquincy]

Is Myles Turner a star player? He's easily worth 25m

Is he a norm or an exception?

Dude lol. The premise is that inefficient scoring chuckers who don’t offer much else are overvalued. You don’t “disagree with the premise” unless you disagree with that. Which you clearly don’t disagree with that.

You may wana re read the title and the OP

[Onlytimewilltel]

Is he a norm or an exception?

Dude lol. The premise is that inefficient scoring chuckers who don’t offer much else are overvalued. You don’t “disagree with the premise” unless you disagree with that. Which you clearly don’t disagree with that.

You may wana re read the title and the OP

I read both. Are you saying you disagree with this, here is the OP summary from last paragraph:

“ This is basically leads to my point that scoring guard role players who don't play defense simply just don't have a lot of value anymore in the new CBA. It's a skillset that often doesn't translate into the playoffs and the market has reflected that. I think the Colin Sexton/Simons types are going at best valued as full midlevel exception players coming off of the bench and perhaps even less than that going forward.”

Are you in disagreement of that? lol. If not, then you don’t “disagree with the premise”

[carlquincy]

Dude lol. The premise is that inefficient scoring chuckers who don’t offer much else are overvalued. You don’t “disagree with the premise” unless you disagree with that. Which you clearly don’t disagree with that.

You may wana re read the title and the OP

I read both. Are you saying you disagree with this, here is the OP summary from last paragraph:

“ This is basically leads to my point that scoring guard role players who don't play defense simply just don't have a lot of value anymore in the new CBA. It's a skillset that often doesn't translate into the playoffs and the market has reflected that. I think the Colin Sexton/Simons types are going at best valued as full midlevel exception players coming off of the bench and perhaps even less than that going forward.”

Are you in disagreement of that? lol. If not, then you don’t “disagree with the premise”

OP specifically singled out guards. I disagreed that it's a guard only issue.

[dj20001]

Which then begs the question. What does Cam Thomas get in RFA this year from Brooklyn? He turns 24 in October. His QO is very low because he was a late-first rounder and then he missed a lot of games this season. His upside is that he just becomes more efficient at being a ballhogging bucket-getter. He does nothing else well. What is he worth?

Perpetually-injured, mostly inefficient combo guard? Likely limited upside. 20 years ago, he'd be more interesting because he's a pretty nice mid-range scorer and FT shooter, but he's a weak finisher in close and he's a tepid 3pt shooter, so you end up running volume through a mediocre option. I wouldn't go too nuts with RFA over a guy like that. Brooklyn won 26 games this past year, and 32 last year when he played 66 games (during which they were ), and ranked 23rd on O. He's bootstrapping only so much. Which, fair, everyone knows he isn't a superstar. Most metrics show him as limply positive to mildly negative on offense, and defense definitely isn't his jam. So no sense tying up huge cap for a guy who really isn't doing enough to warrant it. Maybe he'd be all right as a 6th man-type scorer, but he's definitely not the dude you want collecting a huge proportion of your cap.

Someone that struggles to finish near the rim would absolutely have issues playing 20 years ago. Especially a player that is already missing so many games in this (less physical) era..

[tsherkin]

Someone that struggles to finish near the rim would absolutely have issues playing 20 years ago. Especially a player that is already missing so many games in this (less physical) era..

Mmmm, but the mobility requirements in the earlier eras were different, and people paid a lot less attention to rim finishing at the time if your mid-range game was good. And league-average efficiency was like 4-6% lower depending on the specific season. So he could get away with it. Understand, Cam Thomas shoots percentages right now which would be elite in the early 2000s... so even if you drop 10% off that FG% (which is roughly the difference in average FG% from 0-3 feet between the two periods), he still ends up being acceptable for a perimeter guy in that time frame. And he provides 45/46/44 splits away from the rim inside the arc, and about 35% from 3.

People liked Glenn Robinson at the time. Glenn Robinson was a 20.7 ppg guy on 45.9 / 34.0 / 82.0, 52.9% TS (100 TS+). He wasn't a particularly stand-out scorer, but he had a pretty nasty mid-range game and people like volume and aesthetics. Thomas would have been well-received at the time for similar reasons. Kind of like a contracted version of why people liked Melo so much.