He doesn't take any risks. Which can be a good thing, if you're playing with DWade, Brandon Roy, Kobe Bryant, or LBJ, but given that he's playing alongside the guys he is, his talent level is about Steve Blake. Which isn't awful, but he's a below average STARTING (there you nits go) point guard if you ask me.

I mean I realize Bibby is a bottom 10 PG, that JJ will never be a top 5 SG, that Marvin's ceiling is probably 8-10 at SF, that Smoove is a detriment to the Hawks in tons of ways, and that Horford is at best the 9th or 10th best C in the league.

And the Hawks are still a good bit better than the Raptors, so something isn't adding up.

Everyone should be more like me imo!

the point is while rondo might be 2nd best or even best defensive PG right now, we are in an era of horrible defensive PGs with no great ones. Infact I can't think of an era off the top of my head which is worse than this one in the modern era. So while Rondo might even be the best defensive PG in the league, his defense is no where near great for the position.

I never said **** about Bargnani. I even admitted last night that he can't rebound. Don't bunch Calderon and Bargnani together.

Cite examples please.

i think you're looking at it backwards

how so? put rondo in an era with guys like Kidd, Payton, Stockton, Blaylock etc and hes not even close to those guys

haha, thanks. Basically I'm just spending an hour or so each morning catching up on threadzilla and then ignoring it for the rest of the day so I can get **** done(trying to play 5000+ hands and make it to gym every day). I know its a bit annoying when I have like 20 posts in a row, but I'll try to at least contribute some decent content in my posts.

Rondo's opponents last year had a 16.5 PER
Calderon's opponents last year had a 16.3 PER

I think people highly overrate/underrate a particular PG's defense based on how good or bad their supporting defense is.

They have 1 great player in Bosh, 1 really good player in Calderon, and one player who has shown potential in Bargs, and one overpaid average NBA starter in Turkoglu. Beyond that their team is absolute garbage, with me reserving judgement on Derozan until he actually plays a game.

meh, at work, trying to actually do work, but 2p2 nba threadzilla's allure is too strong.

That was obviously in reference to the RealGM Raps forum

I actually thought that epipen's argurment for why perk was as good as okafor was pretty good.

Okafor's better offensively by a decent margin, but it's not like we're talking Steve Nash vs. Steve Blake. I think they're similarly capable rebounders. Defensively I think Perk is slightly better at man D. Point is, neither are exceptional, but I like both enough. I probably also would give the slight nod to Perkins considering the teams the Celtics are afraid of have Shaq, Dwight Howard, Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol, and Tim Duncan, 5 guys that Perk's strength and size will do a lot more than Okafor's basketball abilities would.

Huh? Calderon let's people run directly by him. It doesn't help that the people he's running towards don't really play defense either.

And it's not necessarily a matter of CAN'T play defense with the Raps. The issue is that they don't.

I'd rather have Okafor for sure. But Perk looks even stronger and more in shape this year than last, so that could change.

lol i'm glad you didn't respond to my last post on the subject so without reposting the entire thing i'll just post my ending argument, my beef with you has nothing to do with you ranking okafor over perkins as they are both super close to each other. It has to do with you likley thinking okafor is a much better player than perk, or that guys like bogut/even joel pryzbilla are better than perk which isn't true

I think statstically speaking you're obviously correct, but I also think that the current era of basketball, and ESPECIALLY short guards are waaaaaay better than any era of the NBA in its history.

FWIW, I think Rondo and Kidd are pretty comparable defensively, and I think Kidd>>>Payton defensively.

Yeah, I have the same problems. Even if I'm playing a very quick opponent, I'm rarely really bothered by it, but I matchup really poorly with some people who know how to use their height/length advantage well.

We need Assani's take on Calderon to finally end this debate.

COME ON MAN

This is obviously true, that a PG's defense is amplified by the (lack of) presence behind him, but they also don't get enough credit by a lot of people in the following attributes:

ability to deny first options/take time off the playclock
ability to interrupt passing lanes back to the player that generally initiates offense

I don't think anyone here considers him a top 5 PG, I hope not at least.

All this really boils down to is that there is a large group of players that start that are all about the same. Maybe slighly better on offensive, or worse on D, whatever. Its this whole argument over the tiniest margins thats ridiculous, especially in a game like basketball where there are so many intangibles and where every game is played slightly different.

This is basically like arguing over why a 12th ranked guy (overall) in the league is better than the 14th. Once you get out of the top 4 players in the league (overall and at specific positions) its sort of a pointless debate until you start getting to the worst starting players.

League average for PER is 15 right? Keep that in perspective people.

damn, and this was the #5 poster from last year! Why so busy now?

As do a lot of point guards. It was a general observation anyways.

If you have two point guards, both who routinely allow their counterpart to run past them into their defense. One point guard has a great interior defense, the other has a poor interior defense. People are going to look at the first as much better because his guy doesn't score as much. That's just how people work, and that's a huge issue with defensive metrics with point guards.