The History Of Guard Play

This is a little bit of a down time in basketball as we wait for the NBA Draft, the big AAU tournaments to start, the Olympics to start, and the college recruiting scene to heat up.  I thought I’d go back and take a look at some of the changes that occurred in basketball through the years.

One of the big changes was the evolution of the Point Guard position.  What got me thinking about this was some of the talk surrounding the upcoming NBA draft. A lot of the guards in the draft this year have questions about if they are point guards or not. These include players like O. J. Mayo, Jerryd Bayless, Russell Westbrook, Eric Gordon and D. J. Augustin for example.  I don’t want to talk about if any of these players are points or not, at this time.  Enough of that will be done as we approach the draft.  However, it did get me thinking about the point guard position.

Many younger fans probably think the point guard has been around since Naismith threw up the first ball.  But it has not.  For years and years, up until the late 60′s, almost all offenses played with a 2 guard front.  Sure, one guard may have handled the ball more than the other guard.  Sometimes that guard was referred to as the team’s ball-handling guard.  But most of the time the guards were simply called guards.  They both had responsibilities to bring the ball up.  Both could run the break.  Both could be in charge of running their team’s offense.

Think about the great Celtic teams in the 50′s; Two Hall of Famers in its backcourt, Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman.  Yes, Cousy handled more than Sharman, but Sharman would initiate the offense some.  Yes, Sharman was more of a shooter, in fact a great shooter, but Cousy was supposed to score a lot too.  Then there was the early 60′s National Champion UCLA teams with All-Americans Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard in the backcourt.  Who was their point?  Both, in the sense that they both handled the ball.  These teams were not the exception, they were the norm. 

My point is that until the late 60′s almost all team used 2 guards.  Almost all offenses were run with a 2 guard front, and 2 forwards on the wings and a center.   The great Oscar Robertson, who one season averaged a TRIPLE DOUBLE (1961-62 season he averaged 30.8 pts., 12.5 rebs., 11.4 asst. per game) would now be called a point guard, at 6′-6″ (talk about ahead of his time), but then he was called a guard, a ball handling  guard.  The 1971-72 World Champion Lakers (who won 33 games in a row that year) had 2 guards, the 6’1” Gail Goodrich, who averaged 26pts. and nearly 5 assists, and the 6’4” Jerry West, who averaged 26 and nearly 10 assists per game.  One wasn’t the point and the other the off guard.  They were guards. Guards who operated from a 2 guard front.  Coach John Wooden (hopefully I don’t have to explain who he is) felt that an offense should start only after a guard to guard pass.  In other words, change sides with the ball before attacking the defense, an important concept even today.  Even the fast break was run differently.  The rebounder after securing the board was to look to the near sideline.  One of the guards was supposed to get to the sideline, the other guard getting to the middle.  Generally, there was no designation  which guard went where.  The nearest guard went to the sideline, the other to the middle.  Then it was a 2 pass break.  Outlet to the sideline, then a pass to the middle to the other guard who would then run the break. 

So what happened? How did the point guard, and the 1 guard front come about? Well, a lot of the reason can be put on North Carolina’s long time coach, Hall of Famer, Coach Dean Smith.  Remember, even with the 2 guards, many teams had one guard who was their primary ball handler.  Coach Smith came up with his Run and Jump Defense, along with the overplay of the wings.  I’ll explain the Run and Jump defense at a later time, but, for simplicity’s sake, it was a way, because of the fairly close proximity of the guards, to disrupt the backcourt and often take the ball out of the primary ball handler’s hands.  By making the primary ball handler give the ball up, the other guard would have to make the entry pass vs an overplay defense.  As North Carolina had more and more success, more teams started using the Run and Jump.  Soon coaches were trying different avenues to negate the effects of the Run and Jump, including circling the other guard.  Eventually, some coaches just started sending their other guard down to the baseline.  Now if there was to be a Run and Jump, the off defender would have to come from a long ways.  Also in play was the overplay of the wings for the entry pass, but I’ll discuss that at a later time.

So presto, now teams were operating from a 1 guard front.  Now there was more of a need of finding one player who could handle the ball the majority of the time, and initiate the offense.  The other guard, who wasn’t handling as much, didn’t have to have the overall guard skills that were needed before.  As things have evolved, the other guard became more of a wing player, with an emphasis on being able to score.  And the responsibility of having someone on the floor who could run the break, handle vs pressure, initiate the offense, and run the team fell onto 1 player, the Point Guard.

As I said, there are other factors that came into play in the changing of offensive sets, but we will talk about them at a later time.

*image source: nba.com, google.com