Point Guards: VIPs of Basketball

Rewind the basketball VCR, back to a time when a kid named Earvin--not yet Magic--wore out the sidewalks of Lansing, Mich., with his incessant dribbling.

The game revolved around centers. Wilt posted up, Wilt got the ball, Wilt dunked. Russell swatted away shot after shot. “Sky hook” entered the vernacular.

Now fast-forward to 1990. Earvin has long since become Magic, joined by friends known as Isiah, K.J. and Stockton. They do not play center, but now the game revolves around them.

With all necessary apologies to Patrick Ewing, Akeem Olajuwon and David Robinson, centers just aren’t enough anymore. Basketball has grown, stretched, quickened. Point guards are hip.

Got a great point guard? You’re in the hunt. Got an ordinary one? Forget it. Just ask Akeem.

“It’s harder to find a great point guard than a player at any other position,” Utah Jazz president Frank Layden says. “It requires more skills, and the biggest is to be a decision-maker.”

The importance of great point men intensifies the search. The Jazz dipped into Spokane, Wash., in 1984, plucking unheralded John Stockton from unheralded Gonzaga University. Projected as Rickey Green’s backup, Stockton instead became a star.

As Utah knows, that does not automatically mean a championship ring; it’s simply a key piece to the puzzle. Each of the last two NBA Finals have matched Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas, good buddies and top-flight point guards. Glen Rice may have scored bushels of points, but Rumeal Robinson was equally important to Michigan’s NCAA title team last spring.

Pete Newell, who coached Cal to the national championship in 1959 and now scouts for the Cleveland Cavaliers, sees this as no coincidence. “You’ll have a hard time winning a championship without a great point guard,” Newell says.

And today, “great point guard” has wider meaning than in the past. Point guards once did not worry about scoring. Dribble, organize, pass. Keep teammates happy.

Maurice Cheeks, now with San Antonio, epitomizes that kind of point guard. As he climbed the basketball ladder, his job description seemed clear. Be a playmaker.

“That’s it,” Cheeks says. “Just pass. Nothing else. It was never in my makeup to score 20-25 points a game.

“Now these guys are more able to score. It’s a time for younger guys who can score and penetrate. They’re more versatile.”

They score, they penetrate, they pass, they lead. Stockton and Kevin Johnson, widely considered the leading point guards for the ‘90s, have firmly put an end to the old style.

Johnson last season became only the fifth player in NBA history to average at least 20 points and 10 assists (joining Magic, Thomas, Nate Archibald and Oscar Robertson). Stockton averaged 17.1 points and a league-high 13.6 assists.

They are the wave of the future for several reasons. As defenses expand -- more double-teaming, more traps and thinly veiled zones -- coaches want swift point guards who can rush the ball upcourt, create fast breaks or at least start the offense quickly.

And since the point guard most often has the ball, he must be a threat to shoot the jump shot or drive to the basket. Forget about poor-shooting, 10-points-per-game stuff.

“That’s out,” Magic says, grimacing and shaking his head. “All these guys can score. You’ve got to be a 17-12 man, or 17-11. That (10 points) just doesn’t get it. The defense will let you have the shot.”

Since this is a story about point guards, we’ll let Johnson have the first shot. He has earned it.

THE MAGIC MAN

Most conventional concepts of the point guard took a beating in the late 1970s. A tall guy with a wide smile emerged from Everett High School in Lansing, then moved on to nearby Michigan State. They called him Magic. They said he played the point.

Jerry Reynolds, the Kings’ director of player personnel, remembers his reaction.

“When I first heard about him in college as a 6-9 point guard, I said, ‘Oh, B.S. You’re saying he’s a point guard, but he really isn’t,’ ” Reynolds recalls. “Then I saw him, and he really was a point guard.

“It was like seeing the pyramids for the first time.”

Earvin Johnson handled the basketball as if he were 5-foot-9. He loved to push the ball upcourt, where he could creatively pass off to teammates. He had a funky, ugly set shot -- which he made just 46 percent of the time in college -- but then, point guards did not need a great shot.

Neither did most 6-9 players. Johnson just never fit the traditional role of a big man, comfortable only within an arm’s reach of the basket.

“I was tall, but I could always dribble,” he says. “Everywhere I went as a kid -- to the store, wherever -- I dribbled. I became a point guard because I dribbled so much.

“And passing always gave me just as much satisfaction (as shooting). To make a good pass was like a rush, a high, and it still is.”

Johnson grew up admiring Nate Archibald, taking ideas for passes from Kevin Porter and Pete Maravich. Porter played for Johnson’s home state Detroit Pistons, and he still holds the NBA single-game record of 29 assists.

That mark -- and not much else -- has eluded Johnson. His magical act, which took Michigan State to the ’79 NCAA title, became an instant NBA hit. In Johnson’s very first season, 1979-80, he and skyhook inventor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led the Los Angeles Lakers to the league championship.

In Kareem’s first four seasons in Los Angeles, the Lakers never won a title. When a great point guard arrived, they immediately did.

Johnson has since added four more rings to his collection. In becoming the player most synonymous with winning since Bill Russell, he sparked a fashionable trend in high schools and on playgrounds across America.

Suddenly, tall kids wanted to handle the ball. Their coaches may not have trashed the idea as quickly as they once did -- “Well, if Magic can do it ...” -- but no replica showed up in the ‘80s.

“We get carried away with Magics,” says Lee Rose, formerly a successful college coach and now the Milwaukee Bucks’ director of player personnel. “We think everybody’s going to be a Magic. Hell, there’s only one Magic.

“His ability to find those open men isn’t necessarily because he’s 6-9. A lot of people that height cannot do what he does.”

If anything, point guards have shrunk since Johnson’s entrance. His chief rivals in the league today -- Thomas, Stockton, Kevin Johnson -- all must stretch to exceed six feet.

Many respected basketball people hesitate to drop Magic Johnson into this group. Jerry West, a decent player in his day, harkens back to earlier times when speaking of Johnson -- when guards were guards.

“Magic’s a guard, because he can do everything,” says West, now the Lakers’ general manager. “If you watch him, Magic is a pretty simple player. He just has charisma.

“When Magic was born, they sprinkled a little extra gold dust on him.”

So how exactly do we measure Johnson’s impact on the position? He clearly brought focus and attention to point men. He helped accelerate the game into the open court, where guards have more impact than centers.

And passing became a bit more chic.

“I’d say I’ve made people aware of being a passer,” Magic says. “Players now are conscious of doing that. Since that’s happened, I feel good about it.”

THE EVOLUTION

For all his wondrous achievements, Johnson did not hang around the peach basket with James Naismith. It only seems as if Magic were there, offering suggestions about how to position players in this new game.

Actually, the key moments in the evolution of the point guard are easily distinguishable. The first sign of life occurred when big men stopped jumping so often.

“Before the war, guards were great big plodding guys, because there was a center-jump after every basket,” Newell says. “The fast break started back then, with the elimination of the center jump.”

Then in 1954, a major rule change forever changed the role of point guards. Dismayed by slowdown strategy and low-scoring games, Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone introduced the 24-second clock.

Suddenly, point guards such as Bob Cousy, Slater Martin and Dick McGuire spent less time dribbling around, protecting leads and shooting free throws. The clock made teams PLAY and made point guards do more than handle the ball.

Twenty-five years later, another new rule completed the shape of today’s game. When the league adopted the three-point shot in 1979, defenses had even more to worry about.