Chris Who???

Chris PaulChris Paul, that’s WHO. If you’re not aware of the opportunity you have to watch one of the greatest point guards of all-time, you are missing a phenomenal show. In fact, it could easily be argued that he is the best “true” point guard ever. Last night was just one more piece of evidence. Wow!

Paul, of course, is the point guard for the New Orleans Hornets. He does it all. In his victory against Philadelphia on Monday night, he tied his career best individual game EFF (Efficiency Rating) of 50. He had a triple double and was within three steals of an extremely rare quadruple double. He leads the league in triple doubles this season with five.

Points: 27

Rebounds: 10

Assists: 15

Steals: 7

Blocks: 1

He only missed six shots from the field, missed zero free throws (12-12), and he had four turnovers. If you add all that up, you get 50. That’s the formula for EFF.

Here are the three times in his career he has hit 50 on the nose. I broke the three games into two different tables because the column on this blog isn’t wide enough.

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I’m going to take a look at how he compares to other great point guards shortly, but first a couple other interesting stats. Since the Magic Johnson era began, it has been very unusual for a player to get 25+ points, 15+ assists, 10+ rebounds. In fact, only four people have done it more than once. Shown are those four players and the number of times they have accomplished the feat. What is incredible is that Paul’s three times are three out of only nine triple doubles so far. Magic had 138 triple doubles, but only managed the above level twice – as has Jason Kidd and Baron Davis.

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One more comment on this. No player in NBA history has ever had 25+/15+/10+/7+.

Paul leads in another category as well. Hoopstats.com is a great (And, I mean GREAT) NBA site in every conceivable way. One of the interesting things they do is to measure individual match-ups within games. In 2008-09, Paul is 37-2 (.949). What that means is he had a higher EFF than his counterpart in all but two cases. Here are the top-10 for the season.

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As I have mentioned before, Kevin Johnson is my all-time favorite player. I wrote all about him in this piece a couple months ago. He is one of the point guards on the list below.

Also shown is Magic Johnson and Oscar Robertson. Arguments can be made about whether these players were prototypical point guards. Obviously, Robertson played in an entirely different era and his stats were second only to Wilt Chamberlain. Magic was a contemporary point guard, but at the minimum, he’s a freak of nature. Of course Cousy was from another era and his stats don’t tell his story very well. As to everyone else, we are pretty much comparing apples to apples.

Paul is in his fourth year, so I’ve sorted this list by Year #4 in the player’s career.

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If you haven’t had a chance to watch Paul, you should! If not for the fact that most people have mentally mailed in their MVP for the season (LeBron), he would have a very good shot at it. His 29.90 EFF is just barely behind James (30.20).