Transistor wrote:whose next? (if any). I'm not saying any of the hype is unwarranted but for the past several years, a new PG comes up whose the next best thing. It's currently the most talented and deepest position in the league, but will that continue? Has last year and this year marked the decline in this trend or is it too early to tell?
The trend will probably continue for the foreseeable future with no decline. This is due to the inherent differences between guards vs. bigs, and because of changes in the league created by the new hand-check rules.
Bigs typically take longer to develop. Even Lebron took a while to grow into his wideset frame if you look at his rookie pictures compared to now. Just like Anthony Davis clearly had room for muscle growth to fill in his frame during his rookie year.
When you look at the improvement curves of bigs, they tend to peak at a later point than the league average. This is due to the fact that bigs can be partly selected for their size and potential more than outright skill initially, in the size vs. skill trade off. So it takes bigs longer to polish and grow their skill, compared to their more skilled guard brethren who depend on skill to differentiate themselves instead of height (since the selection pool for guards is larger than the talent pool for bigs, because there's a lower barrier to entry based on height).
And then, you have the changes in hand-checking rules that now favor penetrating and scoring guards, removing the ease with which defenders could put pressure on them in earlier eras without being called for fouls due to the change in hand-checking rules. Thus, the rise of scoring guards means that many SG's can be shoehorned into the PG role. And you even have two PG lineups and small ball being run, in order to find playtime for them and to maximize the benefit of the more favorable handchecking rules.
And finally, you have the fact that guard play is inherently more dynamic, whether it's movement based penetration, ball whipping passes, or bombing from deep. So they're more likely to get more accolades and attention than bigs, especially early in their careers at the same comparable point of development.
