HoopTalk – Point Guard’s

My favorite position on the court. The quarterback, extension of the coach, and has to be one of the smarter players, is the point guard. So much responsibility lies on the back of the point guard.

Without a proper point guard, teams have an immediate advantage on defense. There is nothing worse than watching a ball handler being pressured and it actually working. As a point guard, you should love pressure; it allows you to create advantages by exposing that pressure. The only way to meet pressure is with pressure. Pressure will dominate a passive or timid ball handler.

Next comes my favorite question: A taller guard or an undersized point? The answer is obvious, I love size in all postions it becomes an immediate defensive advantage having length. But that is not to say an undersized guard cannot play at the highest levels. As we have previously written, defense becomes a mindset, and sometimes those “big guards” can become complacent, in which they have all the physical intangibles, but lack the most important intangible of them all, the mental acumen of the game.

A point guard’s job comes down to game management. Are you getting the right shot every possession? Are you setting our defense every possession, whether that be through ball pressure or setting our fort? Hundreds of these questions should be running through a point guard’s mind at all times.

Being a point guard is not easy, which is why we tend to see more combo guards who can handle the ball, but are looking to score more than create/set up the offense. Combo guards are almost valued higher than point guards, as teams think they can “create” or develop a player into a point guard, and in my humble opinion, they could not be more wrong. A player who has never played point guard will never develop into a point guard. Being a point guard is innate.