Greatest Shooting Guards of All-Time

Over at ESPN, they recently had their NBA writers pick who they thought were the best shooting guards ever. Now, the list doesn't have any insane things going on, but here's my problem with it: Six of the players are from the 90s or later. Now, I have no idea how to rank players that existed prior to the 80s. In fact, I don't even know most of them. I find it amazing though that six of the greatest shooting guards have all played in the last twenty years (seven if you fudge a little and include George Gervin).

That fact makes the list incredibly suspect to me. That being said, when I look at the "Also receiving votes" part, I have no idea who about half of the guys even are, so they couldn't have been that good. Still, players need to be judged based off the time in which they played. This cuts both ways of course, but players like Wilt are the legends they are because they played prior to some of the major influx of talent that the league has seen in recent years. Wilt would still be an absolute force, but I don't think there's anyway he could average fifty points a season now.

With that in mind, it is absolutely ludicrous to me that the article says Kobe could overtake Michael as the greatest SG of all time. In what universe do these people exist? Bill Simmons has repeatedly pointed out that if the no hand checking rules were in place during Jordan's younger years, he probably would have matched Wilt's 50 ppg. The rules Kobe plays under are absolutely WNBA rules compared to the late 80s/early 90s and his stats should suffer as a result in any comparison.

Also, ESPN claims that Kobe is the fastest to 20,000 points, which, of course, is a God damn lie. He was the youngest but that doesn't really mean anything. Click that link and look at the true sign of fastest...Games played. Wilt, being Wilt, is number one by a mind boggling 121 games. He did it in 499 games or just six current seasons. Holy Shit! To put that in perspective, Lebron would have to score around 9500 points next season to match that, a mere 115.8 points per game. (Note: If you were to do the real math, Lebron is at 374 games and 10225 points so he'd have to average a mere 78.2 points a game over his next 125 to be able to match Wilt. Probably would affect his triple double chances though).

Kobe, when put into perspective of games played, isn't even in the top 10. He's number fifteen. That's just sloppy hyping by ESPN to put that in their article.

Finally, before we go, can someone please explain to me how this

Received 23 votes? That means he averaged a top 10 finish on the ballots. What the hell? Dwayne Wade was quick as hell and helped get the Heat a championship thanks to his ability to draw phantom calls. But a top 10 SG all-time with his career so far? He's in his fifth season, has been injured for most of two of them, won a championship with Shaq in Shaq's last good season...how does five years like that get you on the list?

Besides, the first five years of one's career are not really a good thing to judge someone on. Here's an example why. Look at these stats: 24.0/5.4/3.7. If you looked at those, you may think that this was a all-time great shooting guard. Then, you realize that it's this guy:

And that's why you don't use the first five years to judge someone. (Note: Vince received 2 points, meaning two people ranked him at 10 or some asshole ranked him at 9. Regardless, whoever voted for him should have their eyes taken out with sporks).

Two closing thoughts:

I find it very interesting that with the exception of a .1 difference between Iverson and Gervin, every single one of the players happens to fall in line with Hollinger's made up PER stat.

I also think it's interesting that Bill Simmons ranked the top five guards in some order of 1-5 but then didn't rank a single other guard on the list except for Drexler (6th on the list) who he ranked as 9th. Say what you will about Simmons, he knows the NBA. I'm curious to see who else he ranked. Of course, if he voted for Dwayne Wade, forget I said anything.