Is the Combo-Guard real?

let’s talk about bacon!

Rose/Westbrook/Wall/others aren’t Shooting guards because of their stature/speed/etc.

no. 2, They also are featured mainly on teams that absolutely need their scoring from game to game so it’s a really unfair judgment

no. 3 The offense features them as scorers as part of the attack, not just as facilitators. Scotty Brooks for example has a horrid offensive playbook. Thibs is better, but he doesn’t have nearly the pieces to make it as effective as he wants to. Vinny Del Negro’s offense has neutered some of CP3s playmaking ability, so the offense absolutely makes the difference

I understand that a combo-guard is a point guard and a shooting guard. So, off the bat that means that the guard has to have an ability to hit a jump shot and that alone disqualifies so many pg’s. In other words, I think that a a combo guard has to be able to create his own shot. IMO

Now the PG part confuses me. Does that mean that it has to be a pg with more of a traditional role similar to a quarterback?

Now maybe i’m wrong but a combo guard in my memory are players like Ron Harper, Penny Hardaway, Isiah Thomas, D. Rose and I’m sure there are many others.

(as we have ball handling fowards, sharp shooting big men all over the league, guards that can’t shoot, etc)

i just thought combo guard was more for their size and ability to stay in the line up as either the 1 or 2 position on both offense and defense

At UCLA he played PG while Collison was injured, otherwise he was the SG.

In the NBA, he is too short to be a SG, so he has a combo-guard mentality playing exclusively at the PG position.

Russell Westbrook and Derrick Rose are “scoring points” in that they aren’t traditional point guards and focus more on their own offense than setting things up for others. Wall is a bit in between those categories, as they use him as both, although at a certain point, the distinction becomes meaningless like with Chris Paul or Deron Williams, who are equally adept at both.

On the other hand, “combo guard” is the term for those who are stuck in between positions, such as guys who are 6’3’’ or 6’4’’ but have the game of a two guard and have difficulties either handling the ball, running an offense, or similar point guard skills to make it feasible for them to play there. Shannon Brown, for instance, is a combo guard since he doesn’t have the size of a two guard, yet doesn’t have near the ballhandling ability or court vision to be a real point guard. This type of players is pretty proliferate throughout the league.

when I think of a combo guard, I just think of players who are well-suited in either role. Monta is a little scoring centric for a point, but can play both guard positions well. Dwyane Wade has proven excellent at the point in the past. Stephen Curry can transition pretty seemlessly, from what I see. I can’t think of a bunch of other examples, but that’s because I don’t pay enough attention to other teams in general. >.>

I mean, definitionally, a combo guard would be a player who plays both guard positions and can move between the two, that is to say, a player that is a combination of both point and off guard, the same way a forward-center plays both power forward and center, or a combo-forward plays both forward spots.

I mean, maybe the term is used a bit too loosely to describe scoring-type point guards, but surely the existence of such players isn’t a myth.