Who's the REAL Best Point Guard (Under-24 Division)?

#1 draft pick John Wall has had a solid rookie season with
8.7 apg, but is he the best young point guard in the league?

A couple days ago, I did a post in response to an ESPN.com poll about the best point guard in the NBA, and the statistical analysis revealed that Chris Paul – not Derrick Rose – is the best floor general in the Association this year.  In doing that post, I read a lot of opinion pieces about point guards this year, and many “experts” and bloggers said the same thing: we are now in a golden age for the point guard position in the NBA.  In fact, as much attention as Blake Griffin has gotten this season, the most hyped rookie in 2010-2011 is 19-year-old Wizards’ PG John Wall (above left).  This got me thinking about the depth of the point guard position, as well as its ample supply of young rising stars.  Immediately after posting last time, I went to work on assembling another point guards ranking – this one limited to the best PG’s who were age 24 or younger at the start of this season.  Would it be the  rookie phenom Wall, or was he overhyped?  Hit the jump to find out.

Sports/Decade Countdown: #1

We continue now with our #1 city/decade on our list of the top 10 cities and decades of the past 110 years. For an overview/explanation of the rankings, and the system used to get them, click here.

The list so far:
#10: Boston, 1970s
#9: Boston, 1980s
#8: Detroit, 1940s

#7: Detroit, 1950s
#6: Boston, 2000s
#5: New York, 1920s
#4: Boston, 1960s
#3: Pittsburgh, 1970s
#2: New York, 1930s

Well, here we are folks--two weeks after post number one, we're finally at the top of the heap for all the cities and decades American professional sports has seen--okay, so it's only been about 110 years, but there's still been an unbelievable amount of talent throughout this list. Think of cities like Boston of the past decade, how everybody was jealous of them--and there were still 5 cities better than them in our study. Now we're coming up to number one, the easy choice whether it was by formula or just by the eye test. There are certain people in sports we can reference with one name only--Pele, Tiger, Babe--but this place had multiple one-namers at the SAME time! Dominance is only once click away...

Sports/Decade Countdown: #5

We continue now with our #5 city/decade on our list of the top 10 cities and decades of the past 110 years. For an overview/explanation of the rankings, and the system used to get them, click here.

The list so far:
#10: Boston, 1970s
#9: Boston, 1980s
#8: Detroit, 1940s

#7: Detroit, 1950s
#6: Boston, 2000s

If these first five seem a little repetitive--well, I can't help how the data comes out. I can only be the sad bearer of bad news, at least for those of you who live in cities other than Boston and Detroit. It's one of the interesting perils in doing research, being unable to control the data to make it look some way that would look "pretty." Can you imagine if SportsCenter had a top-10 that consisted of plays made by ONE team? It would never happen! But, what if those 10 plays were actually the 10 best of the day (weekend, year, whatever)? Well, then, it's my duty as an objective journalist to start the research, and let the numbers tell me the rest. Fear not, though, more cities make appearances. Starting here at number 5, to be precise--one of the most interesting cities on the list, because of the timing of the whole thing. Confused? Interesting thing about life in the 1920s, at least in regard to sports: there was no such thing as an official Most Valuable Player award. Sure, Hugh Chalmers gave away cars for a few years, but it wasn't until 1931 that the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) gave their first official awards to Lefty Grove and Frankie Frish. But that still wasn't a problem for...

Sports/Decade Countdown: #6

We continue now with our #6 city/decade on our list of the top 10 cities and decades of the past 110 years. For an overview/explanation of the rankings, and the system used to get them, click here.

The list so far:
#10: Boston, 1970s
#9: Boston, 1980s
#8: Detroit, 1940s

#7: Detroit, 1950s

All of the decades we've seen so far have been old--well, at least to a kid born in 1988. With the advent of free agency and salary caps, not to mention the increased exposure many top athletes are getting paid in arenas other than sports (Peyton Manning on SNL, LeBron James' decision), an attitude that only furthers the idea that athletes are in it for the money. Either way, it's no secret that players are changing teams far more often now than they did before free agency, so keeping any dynasty together is nearly impossible as player salaries keep increasing and increasing. That being said, there have been a few executives who knew what they were doing. And, every once in a while, the stars align and those executives all end up in the same city around the same time.

Sports/Decade Countdown: #7

We continue now with our #7 city/decade on our list of the top 10 cities and decades of the past 110 years. For an overview/explanation of the rankings, and the system used to get them, click here.

The list so far:
#10: Boston, 1970s
#9: Boston, 1980s
#8: Detroit, 1940s

Is a city truly great if one player has a decade for the record books? I mean, for people living there, watching a player dominate his league like Lance Armstrong in the late 1990s can be almost as exciting as the titles they bring. Knowing the player on your favorite team is beyond good, beyond great, feared by every opponent...well, that's quite the rush in itself. Not that I would know, I'm too jealous being busy of other cities with those kinds of athletic gods residing in their mists. On to decade #7, with one of the greatest men to ever lace up skates pulling his city onto the list...

Sports/Decade Countdown: #9

We continue now with our #9 city/decade on our list of the top 10 cities and decades of the past 110 years. For an overview/explanation of the rankings, and the system used to get them, click here.

So far:
#10: Boston, 1970s

The idea of these lists is to spark debate--there's no one formula that could ever solve for "happiness" of fans in a particular city, so at the end of the day you have to get as close as possible and then have a discussion about the particularities. For instance, is making the finals (but losing) better than not making it at all? That question is a critical one to our city/decade that we find at #9:
 

The Countdown, Please...

Here's Part 2 of the list of best city/decade in which to be a sports fan.

For part one, Click Here.

There was, however, one thing left on the data sheet that hadn’t been accounted for—winning percentage in the regular season. Now, this one presented a problem for me: winning percentage was obviously important on some level, but then again…who cared if the teams barely went .500 but somehow made the playoffs and won the championships ever year? I decided, though, to set Boston’s 1967s standard of winning 60% of their games and setting that to 1, then taking the ratio of other city/decade’s winning percentage and dividing by .600 to find their factor.

            I then multiplied the winning percentage factor by the scores above and got our final, mostly-objective top 10 (plus a few that just missed out, and a few of this decade’s scores):

-Atlanta, 2000s: 19.674

-Phoenix, 2000s: 80.514

-Dallas, 2000s: 93.177

-New York, 2000s: 110.656

-Philadelphia, 2000s: 143.773

-Los Angeles, 2000s: 175.175

14) Los Angeles, 1980s (Score: 183.94)

13) Chicago, 1990s (Score: 193.28)

12) Philadelphia, 1980s (Score: 195.93)

11) New York, 1940s (Score: 198.81)

Want to see who made the cut to the top 10? Hit the jump!