The NBA is in its golden era of point guards, and trying to rank them is a reminder of that.
A panel of CBS Sports reporters decided to rank the top 22 point guards in the league heading into the 2022-23 regular season. And their list underscores how many Hall of Fame worthy players at the position are active.
The panel consists of Colin Ward-Henninger, Jack Maloney, Sam Quinn, Brad Botkin, James Herbert and Jasmyn Wimbish.
The Oklahoma City Thunder finished with just one entry, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. There is no mention of Josh Giddey on the list. It’s not known what the reasoning behind this was: the difficulty in assigning Giddey to one specific position or whether the panel does not believe Giddey is one of the top 22 point guards.
Looking through the other CBS Sports position rankings, Giddey is not mentioned in the top 22 either, so it appears the latter is the case.
That conclusion makes sense. Despite Giddey’s impressive play in the first half of the season, missing the entire second half sans one game and shooting concerns probably cooled off any talks of Giddey making the CBS panel’s rankings. But if Giddey continues to improve and develop a decent shot, he should be featured more often in future rankings.
Enough talk about Giddey though, let’s take a look at where the panel ranks Gilgoeus-Alexander and its reasoning.
No. 11: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
“Once the Thunder begin to improve as a team, Gilgeous-Alexander will likely garner more attention, because he can really do it all as a point guard. He was one of just four point guards to average at least 24 points, five rebounds and five assists per game last season. The other three were Steph Curry, Luka Doncic and Ja Morant. Gilgeous-Alexander is already keeping that company statistically, and like his team, he still has room to improve. — Michael Kaskey-Blomain”
