. . . but what position did Robertson play, literally?
He was a combo guard, and had most of the ball-handling and distributing duties. He's commonly referred to as a point guard, though. See, for instance, here: Link.
Most, if not all. He was averaging 11+ assists in a time with different rules that made assists a lot harder to get. Cousy was a full-time PG and he was getting more like 7 a game.
Assists weren't that much harder to get back then. They did give out somewhat fewer of them per basket made, but there were also more baskets made.
If LeBron is a PG then you could argue an incredibly long list of non-PGs that could also be considered PGs, and you can pretty much make an argument about every player being considered a different position than the one they actually play. That's why terms like PF/C, combo guard, swingman, and POINT-FORWARD (LeBron) were created.
As far as actual positions on the court, there's only 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 and LeBron is without a doubt a 3.
Yeah, LeBron's a pg then so is Bird and so was Wade until last year.
Yeah but the criteria was much more stringent, who's to say that doesn't outweigh the few more baskets made per game?
The numbers. From 60-61 through 64-65 teams averaged 1806 assists per year. Over the last 5 years teams have averaged 1751 assists per year. In Cousy's best assist year in the 50s teams averaged 1747 assists a year, which is almost identical to current numbers. More assists were awarded when Oscar played, because the increase in shots was greater than the criteria's effect on the percentage of baskets with assists awarded on them.
So what? That's teams. According to the numbers, a guy like Jose Calderon is a better distributor than Cousy?
Obviously the assists are the total of all assists assigned to a given team, not to the team itself. If Jose Calderon gets more assists than Cousy even though both teams get about the same amount of assists, I'd say that it's more indicative of one offense being more point guard centric and the other based more on ball movement and passing. I don't think that very many people feel that everyone who gets more assists than Cousy is a better distributor than Cousy or even as good a distributor as Cousy.
Well I thought that teams were less PG centric back then, with more players involved in ball moment, and that was one of the reasons for a higher amount of team assists.
As far as PGs go, I don't see how assists being easier to get nowadays is a bad argument for Jose Calderon averaging more assists than a superior distributor like Cousy. Obviously I didn't watch Cousy play so I could be guessing, but I thought it was a pretty common well-known fact that assists were harder to get in those days. I don't see how a few more FGs makes up for the fact that all the FGs, including the "extra" FGs had different criteria to be assisted on. I mean you're acting like those few baskets are guaranteed assists, they were still harder to get than if today's players played at a higher pace.
I don't see how you can say anything is clear cut when you're comparing eras. But my guess is if Oscar and Cousy were put in a time machine and forced to play with today's pace and rules, they're not gonna average LESS than their 7.5 and 9.5 career assist averages.
Topic: Where would you rank Kidd on the list of All-Time Point Guards? (Read 16592 times)