2019 NBA Draft — Ranking the Point Guards

Ja Morant is #1, but is Darius Garland or Coby White second best? And what if the answer is neither of them?

POINT GUARD IS THE NBA VERSION OF A QUARTERBACK. The point guard runs the offense and touches the ball on every play, often several times. They’re the ones making key decisions and processing everything, the engines that make everything else tick. A team takes on the personality of its point guard and an offense is built around their strengths, just like a franchise quarterback. And for the few teams without their cornerstone guy, nothing else seems to line up quite right until they find them.

There’s another way point guard is like quarterback. In the NFL Draft year after year, quarterbacks get pushed far up the rankings and taken at the top of the draft in a panic. Any team without its franchise quarterback is expected to swing on someone who could be that guy. The NBA is starting to feel the same way. Teams like the Bulls, Suns, and Knicks do not have a sure point guard to lead the offense, so now that they each have a top-7 pick, there’s a lot of pressure to go find a lead handler so everything can flow through them.

The problem is this year’s point guard class isn’t very good. It’s not great at the top, and it’s definitely not deep. Potential first-round picks like Tre Jones, Markus Howard, and Ashton Hagans all returned to college, leaving the point guard rankings leaner than ever in an already weak year…