Luke: Are we looking at a potential point guard Renaissance? Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Rajon Rondo, Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook + exciting starts to the careers of Tyreke Evans, Brandon Jennings, Stephen Curry and Darren Collison + John Wall and Ricky Rubio entering the league soon (not saying there’s any indication they’ll be great, just saying the promise they’ve shown makes them relevant for this hypothetical). In the 90s it was bigs, in the 00s it was swingmen. Maybe the small ball trend is giving point guards the right circumstances to thrive. Or, maybe it’s not a pg thing at all. Part of me feels like we’re just looking at the next wave of really ridiculous talent. Since the 2003 draft the league has been getting steadily deeper after a post-Jordan drought where we had only a few great players (shaq, td, kg, kidd, kobe) and a lot of really talented guys who were among the best in the league at the time but don’t quite cut it in the grams scheme (Dirk, Paul pierce, Ray Allen, tmac, Vince Carter, Yao, etc). At the very least we’ll have Lebron, Dwade, Dwight, CP3, Melo, Durant, Deron, Rajon, Bosh, and Drose, all of whom are still getting better. The NBA is gonna be good this decade.

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Chris: First thing I thought when reading the list of the ‘point guard renaissance’ was that half these guys aren’t really pgs, even though they play pg. So maybe the ‘renaissance’ is actually the combo guard that runs the team, which has always been frowned upon throughout nba history (steph marbury may have been ahead of his time).

Yes, the names you list are all super ill, and I’m definitely looking forward to see how their respective careers unfold. But to me, this is no different than what’s been happening talent wise post-jordan, and I think the influx of talent began more in the mid-nineties, rather than 2003.

For the next decade, we’ll still have the handful of iconic players, the hall-of-famers who didn’t quite make that immortal jump (most likely due to lack of titles), and some other guys who are pretty good. Lebron, dwight, cp3, dwade (like shaq, td, kg, kidd, kobe) are the ‘great’ players, while the ‘really talented guys’ are durant, melo, rose, deron, bosh, roy, rondo, etc (Dirk, Paul pierce, Ray Allen, tmac, Vince
Carter, Yao, etc). Maybe a tyreke or a wall or a curry break into one of these tiers, but more likely they’ll fall into the next level of ‘couple all-star appearance’ guys (baron, brand, parker, rip, jamison).

Bottom line is, the talent has been great for a while, and that’s why I’ve been able to turn on any random game for the past 15yrs and find something interesting about it. I find it curious how most people refer to the years after MJ as a ‘drought’ (you’re in the majority I believe). I think the drought existed while MJ was in his prime, in the early 90s. He was athletically a generation ahead of everyone else in his era, which is why his greatness came across so much larger than the greatness of the other greats, but that’s an (great) issue for us to get at another day.

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Luke: Wait, what? Granted, I wasn’t following nba in the early 90s as closely as I do now, but wasn’t the talent ridiculous then? Jordan, Magic, Barkley, Isaiah, Olajuwon, Ewing, Robinson, Drexler, Malone, Stockton, ‘Nique, the end of Bird, the beginning of Shaq? And that’s just off the top, I’m probably missing some people. That feels different than post-jordan. I’m not saying the best players in the post-jordan weren’t some of the best all-time, but it was a big drop after that. The second tier of players right now just seems better to me. Maybe I’m counting on too much potential being realized. Maybe this is just the most upside the league has had in a long time. I don’t think roy or bosh will make the immortal leap. As much as I want him to, I don’t think Melo has it either. I think Deron is kind of like Nash–he’ll just keep playing at this level for so long that we’ll all have to agree this guy is really really really good (right now he’s just really good) and that his name will come up when we talk about great point guards. The guys I think have a chance to make the immortal leap are durant, rondo, and rose, mostly because they’re all so young and I don’t think we’ve seen their ceilings yet. Contrastingly, I don’t think deron williams has reached his ceiling yet, but I do think we’ve “seen” it, or rather, we can visualize it. I can’t visualize the ceilings for those three guys (you might think you can for all of them, but a lot of people did for durant early on and he’s already crashed through that. rondo wasn’t even expected to be that tight but he’s already the best player on a championship contender putting up historic performances.) The second tier guys even seem a little too good to be second tier. The NBA top-talent clique rolls deep.