Gary Payton believes Stephen Curry is not a real point guard: "We are putting shooting guards as point guards now in the NBA"
One of the biggest debates about Steph Curry is whether he is a point guard or not.
Curry is the Golden State Warriors' starting one by position. However, he does not orchestrate the Dubs' offense as a traditional floor general would. Instead, that task falls heavily on forward Draymond Green, while "Chef's" main task on offense is usually to break free from his defenders and get that small space where he can launch his deadly three-point shots.
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Hall of Famer and 1996 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Gary Payton shared his case against Steph being considered a true point guard during a recent appearance on the "Brownie and Rab Show."
"Everyone looks at Steph Curry as a point guard, and he's not," said Payton. "I don't believe that. They're scorers. That's what we say in the era again. A point guard is not a legit point guard, what we're talking about. If you think about it, Nash is a legit point guard. You're talking about Jason Kidd as a legit point guard, myself as a legit point guard, Chris Paul is a legit point guard, John Stockton is an elite point guard. See, that's the difference of what the era is. We are putting shooting guards as point guards now in the NBA."
A shoot-first point guard
Payton attributes it partly to the difference in eras, but also to the natural evolution of the game. What started as a traditional, structured sport under Dr. Naismith has transformed into today's positionless style. Back then, big men played exclusively on the inside. Nowadays, they step out and take the three-pointer with the green light from the bench.
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Point guards, like the names GP mentioned, were more facilitators or court generals who set up the offense. At best, they racked up assists and preferred to pass rather than score. Much like today's big men are expected to shoot, modern point guards are also scoring threats. Some, like Curry, are even shoot-first guards — but Payton firmly argues that he doesn't fit that traditional point guard mold.
"Now it's a little different in this era because we got a lot of people that can go one-on-one basketball and score. Now, if we really think about it, what is the point guard that you see right now who is having more assists than anything? Now we're looking at Haliburton. He's a legit point guard, because he facilitates and does things the right way, and he gets to the bucket when he has to," the Hall of Fame guard added.
Related: Walt Frazier admits NBA players were afraid to lift weights back in the day: "Basketball players thought it would affect their shot"
Zeke also said that Steph is no PG
Payton's thoughts about what a true point guard is were once shared by his fellow Hall of Famer and two-time NBA champion, Isiah Thomas, who also believed that Curry should not be included in the GOAT PG debate because he isn't a real point guard.
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"What he's been able to do for this generation of play and the way he's won it with has been different than anybody elsehas ever tried to do it," Thomas said on "The Draymond Green Show." "With Stephen Curry, the way he has done it, nobody could compete with him. Allen Iverson was the closest small guy to come to doing it the way Steph is doing it."
As mentioned earlier, the current game has become positionless, so not all players can be standardized under traditional positions. Today's game features roles like Stretch Fours and Point-Forwards, and if you want, you can call Steph a hybrid guard. But perhaps the more fitting label is "modern point guard," a title that, while accurate, might not sit well with old-school legends like "The Glove" and "Zeke."
Related: 'I was never able to drive right or do anything going to my right hand' - Steph Curry reveals the secret that unlocked his back-to-back MVP seasons
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New York Times
6 minutes ago
- New York Times
Why NBA fans shouldn't be mad about teams' strategy of fouling when leading by 3
I'm having some cognitive dissonance about the 'foul-up-three' ploy the Oklahoma City Thunder used Monday at the end of Game 4 of the Western Conference finals. All I'm reading on social media is that the NBA needs to do something to penalize this strategy because it's too much of an advantage. And all I'm thinking is that the league needs to stop coaches from using this strategy because they keep screwing it up and botching a hugely favorable win-probability scenario. I'm spending the last 20 seconds of every game screaming, 'What are you guys doing?!' at my TV. Advertisement Before we go forward, let's back up. I'm a bit surprised that now is the moment we've decided this is horrible, because the foul-up-three ploy has been around almost as long as the 3-pointer itself. Notably, the Houston Rockets used it at the end of their Game 7 'kiss of death' game against the Phoenix Suns in 1995 after Mario Elie's shot put them up three with 7.1 seconds left. (I'll go more retro: My opponents in a 1989 high school game were trying to foul up three — in only the second year my state had the 3-point line!) Generally speaking, a team with a three-point lead in the final seconds of a game is in an incredibly favorable position. Not only does the opponent have to make a 3 to extend the game, but the opponent knows it has to make a 3 to extend the game. Thus, the 3s you end up seeing in those situations often look like this one, from when the Indiana Pacers conspicuously did not foul up three at the end of Game 2 against New York when the Knicks gained possession with 14.1 seconds left: An opponent 3 doesn't result in a loss; it results in a worst-case scenario of the game being tied and continuing. And often, even in these situations, the opponent 3 comes before the buzzer, which means the team with the lead still has a possession to respond. In the NBA, where a team can advance the ball with a timeout, this can be particularly powerful if a team has a timeout left. As a result, the foul-up-three isn't quite the life hack some people seem to think. However, there is one particular situation where it is valuable: the old Stan Van Gundy rule of fouling up three when the clock is inside six seconds. Even then, it can be difficult to execute. If the opponent is inbounding from the frontcourt after a timeout and can go straight into a shot, it brings the risk of a three-shot foul. Teams are probably better off defending in that situation. Here's a scenario where the Pacers didn't foul because of the risk of the player shooting immediately and were less fortunate: Jaylen Brown's shot from Game 1 of the 2024 Eastern Conference finals. Watch Pascal Siakam conspicuously not fouling as Brown's heave finds the net: Indiana then couldn't score itself with 5.7 seconds left and lost in overtime, eventually being swept by the Boston Celtics. (Indiana, I will note, also did not foul up three in overtime of Game 1 against New York, with 15.1 seconds left. New York forced up a similarly wild miss from Jalen Brunson; an offensive rebound produced a better look for Karl-Anthony Towns, but he missed too. Even if he had made it, Indiana would have had roughly five seconds to respond and retake the lead.) Advertisement So, back to Game 4 of Thunder-Timberwolves. Minnesota's last possession slammed into the golden Van Gundy Rule scenario where fouling up three makes the most sense: having no timeouts and needing to advance the ball the length of the court, with only six seconds left. Oklahoma City's Alex Caruso could give the foul and be relatively certain that Anthony Edwards wouldn't pull up from 60 feet and make it a three-shot scenario. (While we're here: The other foul-up-three loophole nobody has tried exploiting, courtesy of Ken Pomeroy, is to foul up three in the waning seconds and then continuously commit lane violations on the second free throw until the other team makes it — thus eliminating the intentional miss and put-back scenario. A smart ref might eventually hit the team with a delay-of-game violation, two of which result in a technical foul.) However, Oklahoma City's earlier strategy — fouling Naz Reid when Lu Dort had him bottled up in the corner with 7.0 seconds left — was much more questionable. The reason why is contained in the two previous playoff games where this strategy overtly failed — the early foul-up-three introduces more possessions, and thus more variance, into a game where the team up three had an overwhelming advantage. The success of the Thunder's strategy depended on a clean inbound pass against a pressing opponent, and then matching the opponent's success at the free-throw line to maintain the three-point lead and foul once again. This is particularly true when teams foul with more than 10 seconds left on the clock, as the Thunder did in Game 1 against the Denver Nuggets and the Knicks did in Game 1 against Indiana. The Thunder's strategy worked out so well that they lost, in regulation and by two. Great work, everyone. The Knicks would have also lost in regulation had Tyrese Haliburton's foot been half a size smaller; they ended up losing in overtime instead. Advertisement The key problem was that Oklahoma City began fouling ridiculously early, with 12.2 seconds left on the clock. Denver ended up with three possessions in 10 seconds, where it normally would have had one, making four free throws and then an Aaron Gordon 3-pointer with 2.8 seconds left. Ditto for the Knicks, who fouled Aaron Nesmith with 12.2 seconds left in regulation in Game 1 and defensive ace OG Anunoby draped all over him. When Anunoby missed a free throw at the other end, the Pacers were only down two and still had 7.1 seconds left, taking away the foul-up-three on the last trip and leaving just enough time for Haliburton's shot to touch the sky and fall through the net at the buzzer. It's a point I've made over and over, but I will make again: The foul-up-three, especially with more than six seconds on the clock, is the only realistic way the leading team can lose in regulation. With all that said, let's circle back to the main point. There's an idea out there that something needs to be 'done' about the foul-up-three because it ruins the end of games. Right now I'd argue more the opposite: That it's making the end of games more exciting, because coaches keep screwing it up and giving away games they shouldn't lose. Also, the instances where it is truly advantageous are so specific — defending team up three, less than six seconds left, opponent not in a position to get into a shooting motion — that I wonder what a rule to address this would even look like and how often it would come into play. That said … I wanted to see Edwards make a bull rush up the court and fling up a desperation 3 for the tie Monday just like everyone else. Also, casual fans can probably appreciate that type of play more than his near-perfect free-throw miss that yielded a mayhem rebounding situation (10 guys went all out for the board, and it hit the ground before anyone got it) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander eventually flinging the ball from his back to an eager fan sitting courtside. The foul-up-three also drags out the end of games, which might be good in some ways (sponsor dollars!) but is probably more of a negative in the big picture, especially since the league seems pretty concerned about fitting games into a two-and-a-half-hour window. Advertisement So, if we really wanted the league's competition committee to legislate this, one possibility is to say that, if the offense is in the bonus, a take foul by the winning team up by three points in the last six seconds (or eight or 10, whatever the committee thinks is appropriate) is one shot and the ball out of bounds. But the league needs to be very careful about the wording of any rule, given the huge potential for unintended consequences. Either way, the thing I can't emphasize enough is that A) we're legislating an extremely specific situation, and B) thus far this postseason, coaches inadvertently have done more to create excitement by fouling up three than they have to remove it. We only got Haliburton's and Gordon's shots because coaches screwed up the scenario. That's why, for me, the story isn't that the foul-up-three needs to be addressed by the rules committee; it's that it needs to be addressed in coaches' meetings. Indiana is doing it right; Oklahoma City and New York, not so much, even if the Thunder ultimately hung on in Game 4.
Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Knicks vs. Pacers: New York will need stops to even the series — can Jalen Brunson stand his ground?
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Left unsaid, of course: The Knicks didn't have one of their worse defenders in there as often. The one who wears No. 11, who just made All-NBA for the second straight season — and the one who gives the Pacers a bullseye to try to target whenever they've got the ball. (Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports Illustration) 'When teams hunt me … I mean, it is what it is,' Jalen Brunson said during New York's Monday media availability. 'Obviously, I'm going to give my effort. I'm gonna give everything I have. I've just got to be smart and not foul, and I think if I just keep my body in the right position and contest shots, and foul or not foul — or not [do something the referees] perceive as a foul — I'll put my team in a better chance to win.' Advertisement With his back against the wall, down 2-0 and heading on the road, Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau not only shuffled his starting five — in went Mitchell Robinson, out went Josh Hart — but also reached deep into his bench, finding guards Landry Shamet (who'd played a total of 31 minutes in this postseason prior to Sunday) and Delon Wright (who'd logged just 3 1/2) at the back of the cupboard. To some degree, the referees' whistles forced Thibodeau's hand: With Brunson and Miles McBride both picking up multiple early fouls, the Knicks needed more backcourt options, especially with backup point guard Cameron Payne largely ineffective in this series. To some degree, though, Thibs rolled with those guards — including McBride, once he got back into the game in the second half — because they were giving New York precisely what it needed: more size, better communication ('Early, loud, continuous talk,' Shamet called it in the locker room), tighter rotations and a stronger overall defensive spine against a Pacers team that had been carving the Knicks up through two and a half games. 'They weren't getting any shots early in the clock,' Knicks forward OG Anunoby said Monday. 'We were making them work each possession and take shots [at the] end of clock, and just making them uncomfortable. … I think [the switching and rotations are] getting better and better each game. The Pacers, they play very fast, so sometimes it gets hard when a lot of things are going on, but the communication has picked up. I think it's getting better and better.' Advertisement The Knicks were down by 13 points when Brunson, toting four fouls, checked out with 1:39 to go in the third quarter. They'd clawed to within three when Brunson checked back in with 8:48 to go in the fourth, thanks to an explosive start to the last stanza from Karl-Anthony Towns and to superior defensive effort. Just a minute and 45 seconds later, Brunson picked up his fifth guarding Andrew Nembhard in transition, sending him back to the bench and bringing McBride back in … at which point the Knicks resumed grinding the Pacers down, with the quintet of Towns, McBride, Hart, Anunoby and Mikal Bridges holding the Pacers to 3-for-10 shooting over the next 5 1/2 minutes before Brunson checked back in with 97 seconds to go. That Thibodeau kept Brunson on the bench for so long in a must-win one-possession game, even with five fouls, arched some eyebrows. He'd later say Brunson's extended absence owed partly to a lack of feel for how the referees were calling the game, and a sense that he couldn't risk a sixth foul given how much he'd need Brunson down the stretch — a feeling confirmed when Brunson checked back in and promptly hit what would prove to be the game-winning runner. Advertisement 'Time and score, you know?' Thibodeau said after the Game 3 win. 'And just trying to get it to the point where you felt like, 'OK, what do we need in the game right now?' And the group was sort of in a good rhythm, so we probably went a little bit longer than normal.' Some of it, though, boiled down to a simple fact: The Knicks needed stops. And those tend to be easier to get with Brunson off the floor. Most advanced metrics peg Brunson — listed at 6-foot-1 with a 6-foot-4 wingspan, lacking elite foot speed or feel for screen navigation — as a below-average defender. Some, like estimated plus-minus, put him near, or at, the very bottom of the league. Over the course of the regular season, the Knicks allowed 8.1 more points per 100 possessions with Brunson on the court than off of it. In the postseason, that's up to 17.9 more points-per-100. Against Indiana? An eye-popping 25.9 points-per-100, as Carlisle and on-court avatar Tyrese Haliburton have repeatedly sought Brunson out to emphasize his defensive weaknesses in hopes of mitigating his overwhelming offensive strengths. Through three games the Knicks have allowed the Pacers to score 27 points in 23 possessions finished on which Brunson was guarding the pick-and-roll ball-handler, according to Synergy Sports tracking — 1.174 points per possession, a mark that would rank near the very bottom of the league over the course of the full season. And that figure doesn't account for the countless trips on which Carlisle, Haliburton and Co. have also looked to attack Brunson in other ways: by taking advantage of him as a low man who won't pose much of a threat as a help defender on drives; by running early drag screens in transition to poke at the Knicks' hedge-and-recover strategy and see what lanes might open up behind the initial coverage; through multiple-screen possessions that force him to navigate the contact again and again, with the aim of getting him discombobulated and trailing the play, allowing one Pacer to pop free and forcing other Knicks to cover him up. Advertisement From there, Indiana's offense can turn into a game of Whac-a-Mole: knock one down, another pops up, and eventually you're taking the ball out of the basket. 'I think it's amplified now, especially against a team like this, where they put you in position to make mistakes,' Hart said at the Knicks' Sunday shootaround before Game 3. 'And if you have one guy that messes up the coverage, one guy that is not communicating, one guy that doesn't step up, it breaks the whole defense down, and now you've got to try to combat that and cover for that. So, a team like this, that's incredibly talented offensively, you can't have any lapses. It just takes one domino to fall to just, you know, [make] everything go chaotic.' When two dominoes fall, the chaos gets compounded — one of the chief reasons why, for all their offensive talents, the Knicks have struggled more than many anticipated in the minutes shared by Brunson and Towns during their first season together: Brunson and Towns averaged 25.7 minutes together per game during the regular season. That's gone up to 27.5 throughout the playoffs. In Game 3, though: just 19. Advertisement Thibodeau chalked that up mostly to foul trouble: Towns went to the bench for the final 6:10 of the first half after a successful Indiana challenge reversed a Towns and-one on Haliburton into the All-Star big man's third foul, and Brunson battled whistles for the second time in three games. 'The thing is, you go in with an idea of what you want the rotation to look like, and then the game unfolds,' Thibodeau said during his Monday media availability. 'And then, there's variables that go along with that, whether it be foul trouble or one group gets going, and maybe there's a need for something else. So you always prioritize winning. Put the team first. But the majority of the time, those guys are gonna finish together. They've played a lot of minutes together, and that's the way we approach it.' Towns struggled mightily when the Pacers hunted him in Game 2, contributing to Thibodeau's decisions both to leave him on the bench for much of the fourth quarter and to shake up his starting five for Game 3, inserting Robinson to insulate Towns and ensure New York maintained paint protection even if Towns got out of position. Towns largely held his own when playing at the 5 in the fourth quarter of Game 3, though, staying poised, executing the coverage and not committing breakdowns that Indiana could exploit. The time will come, perhaps as soon as Tuesday's Game 4, where Brunson will have to stand his ground, too. He's proven at times to be capable of doing it — chiefly in Round 2 against Boston, battling and holding his own when switched onto bigger wings like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Expect the Pacers to show a renewed level of intention and aggression in forcing him to prove he can do it against them — especially after feeling like they too often let New York off the hook in Game 3. 'No, it was poor,' Carlisle said of Indiana's second-half offensive process during his Monday media availability at the Pacers' practice facility. 'I mean, it has to be a lot better. I'm not going to get into specifics about it, but it was not good.' Advertisement To a man, the Pacers attributed their underwhelming second half — just 42 points on 14-for-38 shooting, 2-for-12 from 3-point range, with as many turnovers as assists (eight) and zero fast-break points in the fourth — to an overall stagnation of their offensive approach. On one hand, more intentionally hunting Brunson could create more of the kinds of breakdowns that open up swing-swing passing sequences to generate open shots and inject some pace and life back into the Indiana attack. On the other, though, repeatedly mismatch-hunting to attack Brunson in isolation could further sap some of the verve from Indiana's offense — the Pacers are throwing 60 fewer passes per game against New York than they did through the first two rounds — and maybe even add to the overall sluggishness. 'I feel like if we try to matchup-hunt too much, our offense can get stagnant — I think it did a little bit [in Game 3],' Pacers reserve guard T.J. McConnell said Monday. 'We've just got to be who we are, both offensively and defensively, be more solid on both ends, and get out and run. Because the matchup hunting can make us a little stagnant.' Advertisement While the Pacers try to strike the right balance for their offense, the Knicks will try to strike theirs: how much to lean into better defensive personnel at the risk of minimizing Brunson versus how much to trust their offensive leader to stand up and be counted on the other end of the court. New York's point guard knows another massive test is coming; now, he and his teammates just have to be equal to the challenge. 'I mean, it's competition. It's the playoffs,' Brunson said Monday. 'In order to go through and do something special, you have to go through a lot of adversity. You have to go through a lot of questioning, mentally and internally, if we're going to do this. It can make or break teams when you're going through things like that, and I think obviously what we did [in Game 3] definitely helps us.'
Yahoo
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