The Cleveland Cavs season is so far disappointing and so far defined by a feud of sorts between Kyrie irving and Dion Waiters. I think this shows the limitations of the so-called golden era of NBA point guards.
Irving is averaging like six assists a game. This is par for the course in today’s NBA. Other all-star level point guards like Russell Westbrook and Damian Lillard and Tony Parker, also average like six assists a game, and get more than three times as many points as they have assists.
Things were different in the last golden era of point guards: the Magic-Isiah-John Stockton-Kevin Johnson-Tim Hardaway-Mark Price era of the late 80s and early 90s. Irving is often compared to KJ, both in terms of explosiveness and brittleness. But KJ’s prime averages were 22 points and 11 assists. Eleven assists a game! In 1989 KJ averaged 20.4 points and 12.2 assists per game. What’s amazing here is that KJ was considered pretty selfish! He was considered the 4th best point guard of that era behind Magic, Isiah and Stockton because those guys were better at getting their teammates involved.
Okay, now back to the limitations of this golden era. It’s fine for your point guard to be like Westbrook or Parker and score a lot more than you assist until it’s stifling the team’s offense, like the one-on-one basketball that kills the Cavs every other night and the one-on-one basketball that killed the Westbrook Thunder in the 2011 playoffs against Dallas and 2012 playoffs against Miami. Exaggerated versions of these players like Tyreke Evans are ridiculed. But these point guards are present on most teams, good or bad. San Antonio and Portland seem to have dealt with the situation by having other good passers throughout the roster. Nic Batum might end up leading the surprising Blazers in assists.
The shoot-first PG situation is so pervasive that the conventional solution to the Cavs problem is “trade Waiters” not “make Iriving pass the ball more.” Irving’s Godfather is Rod Strickland, but the way he’s played this year he may as well have been blessed by Eric “Sleepy” Floyd.