Here in Utah we had 19 years of an all-time great in John Stockton followed by 5.5 years of a phenomenal player in Deron Williams. Historically the PG has been the guy tasked with getting everyone involved and racking up assists. This works pretty good when you've got excellent talent like a Stockton, Williams or Nash who can distribute the ball (even though Williams is in a much different class than those other two). The default perspective is that you need a distributing PG for a good offense or to make players around them better. However, a trend that I think is visible is when you're looking for someone to be a distributor just for the sake of having a distributor. In this sense it's easy to fall for a trap of needing an "assist hog" and believing a team is playing better because one guy is more responsible for passes that directly lead to buckets. Teams like the Spurs manage to move the ball a lot without rely on a ball-dominating distributor.
From my view, the most important thing a PG can do aside from distribute (and I'm even starting to possibly favor this above distributing) is be able to hit an outside shot because, if they can't, after they pass that ball, they become kind of useless. Never been much of a fan of guys who rack up the assists but can't shoot for **** (Rondo, Rubio).
In any case, naturally our offensive systems have changed drastically over the years, but we certainly carry forward the ideas about what a PG should be colored by our bias of watching a legendary player followed by a phenomenal player and expecting to approximate anything like that with much lesser players. Over the years we've brought in a lot of PGs and ever since the Jacque Vaughn era, I'd wanted a number of guys who are great distributors to back up Stockton (who we eventually even had on our roster). Taking a look over the PGs we've had over the past 25ish years that have played any kind of reasonable role leaves us with the following list:
John Stockton
John Crotty
Howard Eisley
Jacque Vaughn
Mo Williams
Carlos Arroyo
Raul Lopez
Torrey Ellis
Keith McLeod (RIP coach)
Milt Pilacio
Jason Hart
Brevin Knight
Jamaal Tinsley
Earl Watson
Ronnie Price
Devin Harris
Trey Burke
JLIII
Shelvin Mack
George Hill
If you were to plot those guys on a graph with four quadrants, the x-axis representing their ability to pass and the y-axis being their ability to shoot, you'd start to see that those who actually played well for us and made the team better would be guys above the x-axis irrespective of their ability to pass. I can't think of any of those guys from that list that were good for us, or even respectable, who weren't good shooters. Some legit distributors on that list (Mark Jackson, Jamaal Tinsley, Brevin Knight) who, independent of their age, sucked absolute *** for us when they were anticipated to do much better than whoever they were replacing because of their better court vision.
Even missing half the season, George Hill was a BAMF. Him being on the floor made the entire team better regardless of how many assists he was getting or how much other people were being set up by him. Could anyone imagine how we would have done last year if George Hill were able to do what Donovan Mitchell is doing this year? Mitchell's been George Hill on steroids, but nobody was really concerned about having someone like GH play PG. Over the years I've started to believe that the variable on PG play isn't being a great passer, but being a willing passer and not being a chucker, as the ball should be moving around a lot more than one guy bring the ball up the floor and making the terminal pass (clearly this isn't how we play which makes a traditional PG a ball-stopping fit).
I'm a little baffled about this resistance to penciling Mitchell in at the 1 because of the "responsibility" or him "learning" another position when we aren't even ideally running a PG-heavy offense, but try to partially do that with Rubio (which makes him more useless -- and makes Mitchell more useless).
Tl;dr:
The Rubio experiment isn't going to spontaneously become good no matter how many advanced stats we want to throw out on how him being on the floor made Minnesota better. He played well the first 10ish games of the season but for exactly the opposite reasons the advanced stats that were pimped predicted him to play well for. He was scoring and shooting well and not racking up any assists. This is starting to feel similar to AK where for him to do well the team has to sacrifice playing well, except with AK was told to eat ****. Except I like Rubio on a personal level and I'm sure he's a good lockerroom guy, which is why I think it'd be easier to move him to the bench and have him accept his role than it was to have AK realize he's not an offensive weapon.
From my view, the most important thing a PG can do aside from distribute (and I'm even starting to possibly favor this above distributing) is be able to hit an outside shot because, if they can't, after they pass that ball, they become kind of useless. Never been much of a fan of guys who rack up the assists but can't shoot for **** (Rondo, Rubio).
In any case, naturally our offensive systems have changed drastically over the years, but we certainly carry forward the ideas about what a PG should be colored by our bias of watching a legendary player followed by a phenomenal player and expecting to approximate anything like that with much lesser players. Over the years we've brought in a lot of PGs and ever since the Jacque Vaughn era, I'd wanted a number of guys who are great distributors to back up Stockton (who we eventually even had on our roster). Taking a look over the PGs we've had over the past 25ish years that have played any kind of reasonable role leaves us with the following list:
John Stockton
John Crotty
Howard Eisley
Jacque Vaughn
Mo Williams
Carlos Arroyo
Raul Lopez
Torrey Ellis
Keith McLeod (RIP coach)
Milt Pilacio
Jason Hart
Brevin Knight
Jamaal Tinsley
Earl Watson
Ronnie Price
Devin Harris
Trey Burke
JLIII
Shelvin Mack
George Hill
If you were to plot those guys on a graph with four quadrants, the x-axis representing their ability to pass and the y-axis being their ability to shoot, you'd start to see that those who actually played well for us and made the team better would be guys above the x-axis irrespective of their ability to pass. I can't think of any of those guys from that list that were good for us, or even respectable, who weren't good shooters. Some legit distributors on that list (Mark Jackson, Jamaal Tinsley, Brevin Knight) who, independent of their age, sucked absolute *** for us when they were anticipated to do much better than whoever they were replacing because of their better court vision.
Even missing half the season, George Hill was a BAMF. Him being on the floor made the entire team better regardless of how many assists he was getting or how much other people were being set up by him. Could anyone imagine how we would have done last year if George Hill were able to do what Donovan Mitchell is doing this year? Mitchell's been George Hill on steroids, but nobody was really concerned about having someone like GH play PG. Over the years I've started to believe that the variable on PG play isn't being a great passer, but being a willing passer and not being a chucker, as the ball should be moving around a lot more than one guy bring the ball up the floor and making the terminal pass (clearly this isn't how we play which makes a traditional PG a ball-stopping fit).
I'm a little baffled about this resistance to penciling Mitchell in at the 1 because of the "responsibility" or him "learning" another position when we aren't even ideally running a PG-heavy offense, but try to partially do that with Rubio (which makes him more useless -- and makes Mitchell more useless).
Tl;dr:
The Rubio experiment isn't going to spontaneously become good no matter how many advanced stats we want to throw out on how him being on the floor made Minnesota better. He played well the first 10ish games of the season but for exactly the opposite reasons the advanced stats that were pimped predicted him to play well for. He was scoring and shooting well and not racking up any assists. This is starting to feel similar to AK where for him to do well the team has to sacrifice playing well, except with AK was told to eat ****. Except I like Rubio on a personal level and I'm sure he's a good lockerroom guy, which is why I think it'd be easier to move him to the bench and have him accept his role than it was to have AK realize he's not an offensive weapon.
