Wednesday, April 22, 2015.
No one won a playoff series on this day, or even took a 3-0 lead. No one scored 50 points or grabbed 30 rebounds. Yes, Tim Duncan played like a man much younger than his almost-39 years, but we’ve come to expect Duncan to defy Father Time. This does not immediately leap to mind as a day which will endure in the public memory.
Yet, on several subtle levels, 4/22/15 could become one of the most significant days in the history of the 21st-century NBA.
Is that a big reach and an irrationally audacious statement to make? Not when you dig beneath the surface.
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It’s one of the great sports-bar or barber-shop debates in basketball: Who is the best point guard in the NBA? Each season, the landscape shifts to some degree, sometimes affirming the previous year’s sense but overturning it on other occasions. April 22, 2015 could become a landmark day in modern NBA history because of the way its events spilled out upon several candidates for the distinction of “best modern NBA point guard.” On and off the court, Wednesday added layers of both complexity and clarity to this ever-evolving discussion.
In Dallas, Rajon Rondo’s exit from the Mavericks — publicly massaged by the outward claim of an injury (true or not, it’s a nice form of cover) — marked the abrupt end to a stormy and turbulent tenure with the team under championship-winning coach Rick Carlisle. Three years ago, after he did so much to bring the Boston Celtics within one win of their most improbable NBA Finals appearance in the Doc Rivers era, Rondo had ample reason to view himself as the NBA’s best point guard. He could dominate games without scoring a point or, at the very least, hitting a jump shot. With Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett aging, Rondo masked a multitude of limitations for the Celtics, bolstering the notion that he could do things his point-guard contemporaries could not. If you felt three years ago that Rondo was the best point guard in the league, you would not have been viewed as unreasonable.
April 22, 2015 marked the surest sign yet that what might have been a Hall of Fame career trajectory is now something much less than that. Rondo’s career lies in ruins, and one wonders where — and how — he’s going to be given a chance to salvage it. Most urgently, it’s hard to see which general manager and coach will embrace the very difficult task of wanting to bring him aboard.
However, Rondo was just one of several point guards who shared the spotlight on April 22.
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There once was a time when Deron Williams existed at the center of best point guard debates. His electric performances for the Utah Jazz vaulted him into the top tier of point guards, but his stay in Brooklyn with the Nets has been an unquestioned failure, with only one playoff series win to his credit. Wednesday night, Williams was easily the central reason his team lost to the Atlanta Hawks in Game 2 of the first round. A 1-of-7 shooting performance, capped by the miss of a wide-open 16-footer in the final 10 seconds, affirmed the extent to which Williams has fallen off the map. Scoring just two points on a night when a relatively pedestrian 12 would have helped his team in a big way showed that Williams is a shell of his former self.
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April 22, 2015 — this day witnessed Chris Paul at his best in a strong first half marked by full-tilt energy. Paul really pushed himself in Game 2 against the San Antonio Spurs, but late in the fourth quarter, with the score tied at 94, he was unable to generate a burst of speed that could carry him to the rim with multiple Spurs in foul trouble. He settled for a 19-footer over Tim Duncan. That shot missed, and Paul was unable to compensate in the ensuing overtime period. His career of near-misses in the playoffs, never more pronounced than last year — when he was the lead actor in a Game 5 second-round gack attack against the Oklahoma City Thunder — encountered yet another wrenching chapter. CP3 is held in very high regard, but legendary moments keep evading him in April and May.
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April 22 gave us a night when Tony Parker had nothing left. This isn’t an indictment of the Spurs’ longtime floor general so much as it magnifies how consistently he’s carried this franchise:
I think it's kinda beautiful to see everyone in the Spurs desperately trying to cover for Parker. Simply b/c TP has singlehandedly carried–
— Juan José (@jjvallejoa) April 23, 2015
–this franchise for long stretches in the past few years. Superhuman effort at times. Eventually it was going to catch up with Parker.
— Juan José (@jjvallejoa) April 23, 2015
Parker is unique in this survey of NBA point guards who absorbed difficult moments on April 22, 2015. His personal lack of production might actually enhance his career legacy. Others on this list can’t make the same claim.
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This brings us to the future and a player not in these playoffs.
The future is supposed to belong to Damian Lillard of Portland, but after another wretched shooting performance against Memphis (5 of 16), Lillard’s star isn’t shining as brightly. He has time to shape his career, whereas others on this list have smaller windows of opportunity. Yet, 2015 is going to represent a step back for Lillard… even if he’s ready to make three or four big steps forward over the remainder of this decade.
The star point guard not in these playoffs is Russell Westbrook. His reputation didn’t grow or shrink in connection with any playoff game, but his body of work is very much a renewed discussion point in light of Scott Brooks’s ouster in Oklahoma City.
How much did Brooks develop Westbrook?
How much did Westbrook save Brooks’s bacon?
How much did the presence of Kevin Durant enable Westbrook to play with better floor spacing?
How much did Westbrook help Durant to retain his status as a top-tier player and annual MVP candidate?
How much did Brooks succeed or fail with the collection of talent he had in Oklahoma City, with Westbrook being his most enigmatic player?
Many different answers are valid, but on April 22, 2015, we were all talking about the reputations of the central players and coaches in the Oklahoma City drama over the past several years.
Similarly, 4/22/15 made us revisit so many of the point-guard debates that consumed NBA commentators over the past several years.
One Wednesday. One collection of games and off-court developments. One day that reminded us how much some core NBA arguments have changed — in their tension points and answers — over an extended period of time.
