Mythbusting: The “True Point Guard”

In recent days, there has been a lot of talk about whether Sterling Gibbs is actually a point guard, and if the team would be better suited to playing Jalen Adams in his spot.

It’s an easy conclusion to come to if you’re only able to look at the team’s win-loss record, but fortunately, we have more data than that available.

The “true point guard” theory was floated regularly last season, when the team struggled with Ryan Boatright at the helm. After all, Boatright played primarily off the ball in 2013-14 and the team won a championship. With Boatright at the point in 2014-15, UConn didn’t even make the NCAA tournament.

Now here’s an outrageous suggestion: The 2014-15 team declined precipitously NOT because Boatright wasn’t a true enough point guard, but  because several key players from the championship team — First-Team All-American Shabazz Napier, second-leading scorer DeAndre Daniels and sharpshooting forward Niels Giffey — departed the program and were not adequately replaced.

Boatright’s own numbers bear this out. When he shared ball-handling duties with Napier in 2012-13, he was a more efficient player. He led the team in usage rate (25.4% to Napier’s 24.2%) and was second in assist % (27% to Napier’s 27.9%). Boatright’s FG% sat at 43, his PER at 18.6, and his TS% was .546.

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The next year, Napier handled the point guard duties full-time, and Boatright struggled. As his usage rate dropped to 22.4 and his assist % dropped to 21.2, he had far fewer opportunities to initiate the offense. His own efficiency decreased as a result, with his PER falling to 17.0, his FG% to 39 and his TS% to .521. But Napier, Daniels and Giffey saw marked improvements in their performances, and the team won. So it worked.

After Napier graduated, Boatright took over as the full-time point guard, and his individual performance improved dramatically. His usage rate went up to 25.3%, his assist rate to 25.3%, and his PER and TS% saw career highs as well, at 23.4 and .581 respectively. It would be hard, if not impossible, to make a credible argument that Boatright was hurt by playing point guard.

But the team lost. Isn’t that enough evidence? Well, of course it’s not. It’s possible for a team to get excellent play from their point guard (like last year’s UConn team) and still lose a lot of games. Additionally, there’s no factual basis for the idea that Boatright somehow failed as a point guard last year. He simply didn’t have teammates that were ready for prime time.

So how does this relate to Gibbs? Well, let’s take a look at Gibbs’ numbers at Seton Hall. He posted a usage rate of 24.8% both years with the Pirates, and assist rates of 29.3% and 26% as a sophomore and junior, respectively. While it’s true that then-freshman Isaiah Whitehead also handled the ball a great deal, he played only 612 minutes, with only about half of Gibbs’ minutes coming with Whitehead on the floor. Unfortunately, there isn’t available play-by-play data to determine exactly how Whitehead’s presence on the court affected Gibbs’ play. What we do have, however, is a nine-game stretch in the middle of the conference season when Whitehead was out with an injury. How did Gibbs play during this stretch, when he was assuredly the primary ball-handler? Let’s take a look.

(Note: I’d prefer to use per-possession data here, but I’d have to estimate it for the 9-game sample, so I’m going to assume that Seton Hall’s pace remained roughly the same during this stretch and use per-40 minute numbers)

As you can see from the data, Gibbs was a more effective scorer and creator when he was playing without Whitehead. His scoring rate and his FG% went up, his assist rate jumped dramatically, and more curiously, his turnover rate dropped significantly as well. And this wasn’t during some cupcake stretch, either. This included dramatic wins over then-#15 St. John’s, and then-#6 Villanova, with Gibbs excelling in both games.

So now that takes us to this year. What do Gibbs’ numbers say about his performance as a point guard?

The answer: not much. By the numbers, Kevin Ollie hasn’t been using Gibbs as a real point guard. His usage rate is a career-low 19.4% and his assist rate, also a career-low, has dropped to 14.8%. The de facto point guard has actually been Daniel Hamilton, with a usage rate of 25.5 and an assist rate of 34%. From this data, the reasonable suggestion is that Gibbs’ problem isn’t that he’s being forced to play point guard and is failing, but rather that he’s struggling to engage in the offense because of how infrequently he handles the ball. In other words, that the solution here is to have Gibbs direct the offense more, not less.

Is that what would be best for the team? It’s hard to say. Hamilton has been outstanding as the team’s primary facilitator, and having Hamilton give up touches for Gibbs may not improve the offense. But what’s clear is that the offense isn’t struggling because it lacks a true point guard. In fact, it doesn’t really appear to have room for one.