Fair bit of chatter out there yesterday about Steph Curry, and where he fits into the Pantheon of Basketball Greats, and more specifically whether or not he fits into it as a point guard, which is how he's listed.
All this is because he dropped 50 on the Sacramento Kings the other day in Game 7 of their firsr-round playoff series, putting the Golden State Warriors on his back as surely as any player in any era ever did. It was one of the all-time Game 7 performances, which prompted all the legacy talk.
Also the point guard talk.
The Blob's take is you can list him as a palace guard for all it matters these days.
Basketball in 2023 has only one position in it, and you can list it as "H." Everyone is an "H" now, which stands for "Hybrid." Centers and forwards and shooting guards and point guards are your father's NBA. They don't really exist anymore in a game that looks nothing like it did even 25 years ago.
So the Blob says Steph Curry is not a point guard, because point guards don't win Game 7's with a 50-spot. Point guards win Game 7's with 15 assists, because their main job is to run the break and distribute, not to score. It's why Magic Johnson is the greatest point guard of all time, because no one ran the break and distributed better than he did.
Curry, on the other hand, is a scorer -- the best perimeter scorer ever, in the Blob's humble opinion -- who handles the ball a lot. He's what Michael Jordan was and what Luka Doncic, Ja Morant, Trae Young, James Harden and a number of others are now.
Speaking of Harden ...
Well, he averaged 10.7 assists per game this season, which is the kind of number your best point guards used to put up.
Last night, however, he went for 45 points against the Celtics as the 76ers took Game 1 in Boston without an injured Joel Embiid. Which means Harden was a scorer just as surely as Curry was when their teams needed scorers.
Point guards?
In 2023, no one's a point guard -- or more accurately, everyone is. The days of Kareem and Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon playing with their backs to the basket on the low blocks have gone the way of '80s hair bands; even the big men play out on the floor now, functioning as distributors as much as scorers and rebounders. Or maybe you haven't caught Nikola Jokic's act -- a 6-11 center who averaged 24.5 points,11.8 boards and 9.8 assists this season.
Seven-footers dish now. They shoot 3s (Jokic made 57 threes this season; Embiid 66). They even bring the ball up, as Jokic does frequently for Denver.
Positions in basketball are irrelevant now, in other words. Or at least positions in the way those of us of a certain age(d) grew up understanding them.
It's why the Kareem's skyhook -- the most unstoppable shot in NBA history -- is practically a museum piece now. Also the mid-range jumper. Also the guy who consistently uses the glass except by accident.
The certain age(d) among us can grumble all we want about that. But then, our fathers used to grumble about the dunk, too. So there you go.
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