Rondo Is A Combo Guard

by Jeff Clark on May 27, 2008 3:21 PM EDT in Boston Celtics News & Links

Ok, so I picked the one thing that seems odd about the charts that Tom Ziller put together on BallHype and made it my headline. That was just to draw you in. See, you are reading, so it worked. Now, take a moment and bask in the warm glow of fancy charts and cool statistics that have nothing to do with John Hollinger. The gist: combo guards are not all bad. (Note: Rondo is listed as a combo guard only because he shoots a bit more often than some considered "pure" point guards. Not a bad thing, according to this study.) A sample:

But despite the veil over the value of the pass, we demand purity. Some of our best point guards (Parker, Billups) are not pure in any sense, but we shun the combo guard. On a league level, assists having nothing to do with offensive production, but we dismiss those who can't drop eight dimes a game. This is all very absurd, as four conference finalists are showing us right now. It must stop.

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We shoot 39 free throws as the visiting team and lose. We really did not deserve to win that game.

by The Real Large James on May 27, 2008 3:40 PM EDT reply actions

Fun article, good link, worth reading.

by Who on May 27, 2008 4:24 PM EDT reply actions

Seems like ‘combo guard’ is used 2 ways. In Ziller’s sense, it is a point guard who can and thus does shoot reasonably often.

But it is also used in the sense of a ‘tweener’ layer who at best can (and often does) play the 1 or the 2, and at worst is a ‘shooting guard in a point guard’s body’ who is basically good enough to make it onto the court, but does better if that’s at the 1, where he’s less likely to be a defensive weakness, even though he doesn’t have all the strengths of a ‘pure’, classic point.

by clover on May 27, 2008 5:06 PM EDT reply actions

layer = player

by clover on May 27, 2008 5:07 PM EDT reply actions

I loved this article. My cousin and I actually made up a term for this kind of point guard about ten years ago. Because “combo guard” has the connotation of not being able to “run a team,” we coined the term “Focal Point” to refer to shoot-first or shoot-often point guards who yet were able to control the entire team’s offense. Isiah Thomas is probably the preeminent Focal Point that I’ve actually watched play. Iverson was a Focal Point for his first few years until he made the switch to full-time “undersized 2-Guard”. The fact that both types get labeled as combo guards is what obscures their actual play.

by migit on May 27, 2008 5:29 PM EDT reply actions