A team in the NBA only needs a solid point guard to win a championship. There is little need for having a great player at the point. Here's my reasoning, Name me a team that won the championship that had a point guard as its best player. You have to go back to Isiah's Pistons. Having point guards who take a lot of shots and dribble the air out of the ball doesn't work. All you need to win is a John Paxson, Kenny Smith, Ron Harper, Avery Johnson, Derek Fisher, Jay Williams, or Rajon Rondo. The only all star level talent point guard who won recently was Tony Parker, and he was no where near being the best player on his team. There are other franshise players who are bigger, stronger, and faster than Chris Paul. Thus, they play the game more efficiently. These are the guys you want to build your team around.
Two points off of this:
1. There are exactly 2 players playing more efficiently than Paul. Wade and James. That's it. Of course this only speaks to offense, but every professional writer I read has a very high opinion of Paul's defense at the 1 spot.
2. Basketball is a weird sport in that a team's success rests disproportionately upon the best players in the game; rarely does s team win without a superstar player. This shrinks the sample size of available possitions to choose from on championship teams. In other words, unlike baseball or football, a guy like jordan can step in and win 6 titles; does that mean that having the MVP shooting guard is important or does it mean that the best player in the NBA happened to be a shooting guard?
Quick look:
Year Best Player Position
80 1 or 5
81 3
82 1
83 5
84 3
85 1
86 3
87 1
88 1
89 1
90 1
91 2
92 2
93 2
94 5
95 5
96 2
97 2
98 2
99 4
00 5
01 5
02 5
03 4
04 1
05 4
06 2
07 4
08 4
This was just real quick thinking about who was the best player on each championship teams since 1980. Here's the breakdown:
PG 7 or 8 *
SG 7
SF 3
PF 5
C 7 or 6
*Tough to choose Magic or Kareem for the best player on the '80s lakers squad. He was Finals MVP so I went with that as the tie-breaker. Additionally, I think Chauncey was the best player on the Pistons' team in '04.
So in the sample size since 1980, I don't think that you can conclude at which position it is most important to have your best player; seems pretty random to me, with a few superstars (Magic, Bird, Duncan, Jordan) being more important than the actual position that they play.