We hear it all the time. NBA analysts call one point guard “pass-first” and another “shoot-first.” Or they say one guy is “turnover-prone” while another “takes care of the ball.” But really, what makes a player a “pass-first” point guard? How carefree must he be with the ball to be considered “turnover-prone”?

I first tackled this subject two years ago, and settled on the shot-to-assist ratio to determine whether a player is “pass-first” or “shoot-first.” The higher the number, the more of a “shoot-first” player he is. To determine whether or not a player is “turnover-prone,” I calculated each player’s assist-to-turnover ratio. The higher the number, the better the player is at taking care of the ball.

I narrowed the list of players to 33, one for each team plus a few extra for teams like Cleveland, Sacramento and Denver, who have a couple of players manning the position. I also added eight prospects (indicated in green) just to see where a few of the younger guys land. Here’s the graph — it’s small, but if you click it, you’ll get to a bigger version:

So the pass-first/shoot-first aspect goes left to right, and the turnover-prone players will be towards the bottom, while the guys that take really good care of the ball will be up top. Players indicated with a blue diamond are in the Top 10 in this group in Efficiency Per Minute. I set the axis for each category at the average of the 33 players in question, so 1.97 for FGA-to-assist and 2.70 assist-to-turnover.

Two years ago when I conducted this study, seven of the top 10 EPM performers were in the top left quadrant (pass-first, takes care of the ball). This year, only five of the top 11 (I included both Rondo and Calderon, since they tied for #11) are in that quadrant. This is due to the emergence of three shoot-first, (fairly) turnover-prone guards who are emerging as stars: Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook and Stephen Curry.

A few takeaways:

Ty Lawson looks like a star. He is #13 in this group in EPM, so if he can continue to post big numbers in bigger minutes he’s poised to join the Top 10 sometime soon.

Kyle Lowry isn’t too far behind him. It’s not clear if Houston has decided that Lowry is their point guard of the future, but he is #16 in EPM and is well above average in assist-to-turnover ratio.

Brandon Jennings can still become a Top 10 point guard. Two years ago, I would have said that Jennings would have to drastically change his game to join the elite group of point guards, but with the way Rose, Westbrook and Curry have emerged, he can continue to be himself. One thing I’ve noticed with his game is that he has a tough time finishing around the hoop when he gets bumped, which is something that Westbrook and Rose excel at. Jennings needs to master the floater — that way, he can use his quickness to get into the lane pretty much any time he wants, and then get his shot off without taking a big hit.

Roddy Beaubois is an interesting prospect, but it’s doubtful he’s going to be a quality starter in this league… unless he changes his game to become more of a distributor. He doesn’t need to turn into Jason Kidd, but right now he’s an outlier so he needs to take better care of the ball and create a few more opportunities for teammates. You may notice that Tyreke Evans is very close to Beaubois, but he really needs to play shooting guard.

If John Wall can take care of the ball, he’ll be right there with Deron Williams. For a rookie, Wall’s numbers look great. Sure, he’s a little turnover prone, but no worse that Westbrook, Billups, Collison or Curry. He’s a playmaker, so once he cuts back on the turnovers, his assist-to-turnover ratio really has a chance to skyrocket. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s up in the area of Maynor and Lowry with a blue diamond next to his name in a couple of seasons.

We hear it all the time. NBA analysts call one point guard “pass-first” and another “shoot-first.” Or they say one guy is “turnover-prone” while another “takes care of the ball.” But really, what makes a player a “pass-first” point guard? How carefree must he be with the ball to be considered “turnover-prone”?

Taking an analytical approach to these questions, I decided to bust out an Excel spreadsheet and try to come up with some answers. Below you’ll see a graph that attempts to classify the top point guards in the league. But first, a little background…

I chose to categorize each player based on two stats. First, to determine if he’s “shoot-first” or “pass-first,” I calculated the shot-to-assist ratio for each player. The bigger the number, the more of a “shoot-first” mentality the player has. Second, to determine whether or not a player is “turnover-prone,” I calculated each player’s assist-to-turnover ratio. I thought about using turnovers per 48 minutes, but I like the idea of including assists so that playmakers are rewarded for the positive as well as the negative. Next, I calculated each player’s Efficiency Per Minute (EPM) to see if there is any correlation between these other statistics and the overall efficiency of the player in question.

The last step was to plot each player based on the two ratios. The graph is a little small, but if you click it, it will take you to a larger version.

Each player is indicated by a separate plot point with his name next to it. (Duh.) The blue diamonds represent the top 10 point guards in terms of EPM. One point guard was chosen per team. Usually, I went with the player that got the most starts at the position.

The further the player is to the right on the (horizontal) x-axis the higher his shot-to-assist ratio and the more of a “shoot-first” mentality he has. Conversely, the further the player is to the left, the more of a “pass-first” point guard he is.

On the (vertical) y-axis, the further the player is towards the top, the better job he does of taking care of the ball (in comparison to the number of assists he posts). Players towards the bottom of the axis have poor assist-to-turnover ratios.

Each axis is set at the average of the 30 players included in the study. The shot-to-assist ratio average is 2.12, while the average assist-to-turnover ratio is 2.66.

A few interesting things to note…

As a whole, the data set takes on a downward slope. Intuitively, this makes sense. “Shoot-first” point guards are generally that way because that is their strength – scoring the ball. They are generally not as adept at being in the playmaker role, so they won’t have a good assist-to-turnover ratio. Conversely, players that are “pass-first” are that way because playmaking is their specialty. They handle the ball well and have good vision.

The sweet spot is in the second (top-left) quadrant. Seven of the top EPM performers at the position – Jose Calderon, Jason Kidd, Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo, Deron Williams, Steve Nash and Chauncey Billups – all have a better-than-average assist-to-turnover ratio and a “pass-first” menality. The other three top 10 EPM performers – Jameer Nelson, Tony Parker and Devin Harris – are reasonably close to that top-left quadrant. The 10 point guards in the top-left quadrant play for teams that had a combined record of 471-349 (.574) in the regular season and seven of those teams made the playoffs. These facts are telling.

Jameer Nelson and Tony Parker aren’t in the ideal quadrant, but they are a good fit for their teams. Think about it – Nelson and Parker play with two of the best big men in the game in Dwight Howard and Tim Duncan. Point guards that play with a great big man will find that assists are a little tougher to come by. Typically, when someone feeds Howard or Duncan, they take their time in the post before they make their move, so the player that passed them the ball doesn’t necessarily get the assist. Plus, anyone can feed the post – it doesn’t have to be the point guard. Think about those seven players in the top-left quadrant for a moment. For the most part, they play with jump shooters (and are therefore more likely to rack up assists).

The Magic are built in the Hakeem Olajuwon-era Rockets mold. They have a dominant big man and the idea is to surround him with great jumpshooters to keep defenses honest. Conversely, Parker oftentimes takes advantage of the amount of attention that defenses pay to Duncan to get to the rim. When he attacks the hole, he’s trying to score and will only pass if the defense forces him to.

Finally, it’s no coincidence that Nelson and Parker are two of the most efficient scorers in this study. In terms of FG%, Parker is first and Nelson is tied for third. Both players shoot better than 50% from the field, so it makes sense that they’d have a “shoot-first” mentality.

Ramon Sessions is a keeper. Luke Ridnour got more starts than Sessions, but I like Sessions more and the Bucks have to decide whether or not to sign the up-and-coming point guard to an extension this summer. Here’s my pitch: He has the #11 EPM (just behind Chauncey Billups) and is on the verge of becoming a very good point guard. His Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of 17.65 is #13 amongst qualified PGs. Throw in the fact that the NBA is becoming increasingly dependent on good point guard play, and the 23-year-old looks like a great (and relatively cheap) prospect. GM John Hammond has to find a way to keep this kid.

Baron Davis isn’t a “shoot-first” point guard?!? Apparently not. His career shot-to-assist ratio is 2.05, so even when we consider his entire body of work, he’s still leans “pass-first.” This is underlined by his 2008-09 campaign, where he was even more “pass-first.”

Derrick Rose turns the ball over too much. I hadn’t yet looked at his numbers, but I could tell this about Rose just watching the Bulls/Celtics series. Every so often he throws a pass that might have made it in college, but isn’t going to make it in the NBA. Most rookie point guards struggle with this, so I’d assume that Rose will start to work his way into that top-left quadrant (or at least the top-right quadrant) in the next year or two. In fact, his assist-to-turnover ratio rose from 2.52 before the All-Star break to 2.56 after. I think he’ll eventually settle in somewhere near Nelson and Parker. He seems like more of a scorer than a pure playmaker, partly do to his incredible ability to finish at the rim.

Where would a healthy Gilbert Arenas fit in? Remember him? Agent Zero has only played 15 games in the last two years, so it’s not really fair to judge him based on those numbers. To get an idea of where he’d land, I calculated his ratios for the 2006-07 season. You’ll find him bunched with Jamal Crawford, Mo Williams, Randy Foye and Aaron Brooks in the bottom-right quadrant, which makes sense because those are all “shoot-first” point guards.

Is Mo Williams’ position on the chart due to his playing with LeBron? After plotting Arenas, it made me wonder about Mo. He was one of the top assist men in the league in his last year in Milwaukee. How does the 2007-08 Mo Williams compare with the 2008-09 version? It turns out that the ’07 version of Mo Williams is a lot like the ’08 Devin Harris, which makes sense considering that both players are very capable scorers and playmakers, but at heart are “shoot-first.”

CONCLUSION

I think the big thing to take away from this is that it’s generally better to have a “pass-first” point guard who takes care of the ball. However, if you have a dominant big man (or a superstar wing like LeBron or Kobe), a “shoot-first” point guard can be just as effective, especially if he can shoot it like Nelson or Williams, or get to the rim like Parker does.

Is there anything that I missed?

The rosters for the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge have been announced and there are a few surprises.

The rookie roster consists of Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, O.J. Mayo, Eric Gordon, Rudy Fernandez, Michael Beasley, Brook Lopez, Greg Oden and Marc Gasol.

The sophomore roster includes Rodney Stuckey, Aaron Brooks, Kevin Durant, Wilson Chandler, Jeff Green, Al Thornton, Luis Scola, Al Horford and Thaddeus Young.

Kevin Love isn’t on the nine-man roster for the Rookie Challenge, and it’s a big, glaring snub. ESPN’s John Hollinger agrees.

For starters, the decision to select Eric Gordon ahead of Kevin Love for the rookies was completely inexcusable.

Don’t get me wrong; Gordon is going to have a fine career, it seems, and in almost any other year he’d be a shoo-in for the team. But he made this squad mainly because the forlorn Clippers have no choice but to play him extensive minutes.

As good as he’s looked, Gordon is the only rookie team member with a Player Efficiency Rating below the league average, while Love has a better PER than every player on the rookie team except Greg Oden. Love leads the league in offensive rebound rate, as I mentioned the other day, but his prodigious work on the boards has gone largely unnoticed because he plays only 23.2 minutes a game, far less than Gordon’s 32.2.

Love’s absence is especially surprising considering how the rookie roster is loaded with four guards (Rose, Westbrook, Mayo, Gordon), one G/F (Fernandez) and only one true forward (Beasley). You’d think that if it were a tossup between Gordon and Love (which it isn’t) that they’d at least want to get another true forward on the roster to balance things out.

Hollinger goes on to rail against the sophomore roster snubs, which included Wilson Chandler over Jamario Moon, Al Thornton over Carl Landry and the worst of all (he says) — Aaron Brooks over Ramon Sessions.

Interestingly, seven of the top 11 picks of the 2007 draft — Mike Conley, Yi Jianlian, Corey Brewer, Brandan Wright, Joakim Noah, Spencer Hawes and Acie Law — did NOT make the sophomore roster. (I counted Greg Oden amongst the four since he made the rookie roster.) Conversely, six of the top 11 picks in the 2008 draft did make the rookie team.

John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating is a nice way to compare players without having to account for the number of minutes each guy gets. It’s an efficiency statistic, so just about everything is included. A PER of 15.00 is average for the position.

Let’s take a look at the top rookies. I’m only going to list guys that are getting more than 20 minutes per game…

1. Kevin Love, T-Wolves
PER: 16.39
Surprised? I am…a little. I really liked Love coming out of college, but he got off to a slow start and the trade Minnesota made (sending O.J. Mayo) to Memphis wasn’t looking too good early on. He’s not shooting the ball well (41%), but he’s rebounding like a champ (8.4 rpg in 22.7 mpg).

2. Greg Oden, Blazers
PER: 16.35
Technically, Oden is still a rookie since he missed all of last season due to injury. After Love, he has the second best rebound rate of all first-year players.

3. Brook Lopez, Nets
PER: 16.26
Rebounding is the stat that most easily translates from college to the pros, so it’s no surprise that three good rebounders top this list. In 29.5 minutes, Lopez is averaging 11.4 points and 8.2 rebounds, and he has more blocks per minute than Oden.

4. Rudy Fernandez, Blazers
PER: 16.25
Rudy has had no problem adjusting to the NBA game. His three-point shooting 39% is outstanding and he’s averaging 11.0 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 26.5 minutes per game. Plus, he was even voted into the Slam Dunk Contest as well.

5. Marc Gasol, Grizzlies
PER: 15.40
The other Gasol is getting starters minutes (30.6) in Memphis and is averaging 11.3 points and 7.3 rebounds per game.

6. Russell Westbrook, Thunder
PER: 15.74
In January, Westbrook is averaging 15.7 points, 6.2 assists and 4.8 rebounds in 34.9 minutes of action. He got off to a slow start, but seems to be figuring things out now.

7. O.J. Mayo, Grizzlies
PER: 15.66
Of all the guys on this list, Mayo might be the guy that asked to do the most. He got off to a blistering start, but defenses are adjusting and his numbers are falling.

8. Derrick Rose, Bulls
PER: 15.45
He and Mayo play more than 37 minutes per game, which is by far tops on this list. It’s hard to argue with the 16.9 points and 6.4 assists that Rose produces every night. Point guard is arguably the toughest position in the NBA to learn as a rookie, and this guy sure looks like a keeper.

9. Michael Beasley, Heat
PER: 15.23
Beasley is getting better as the season wears on. He’s averaging 14.9 points (on 50% shooting) and 6.0 rebounds in January. He’s also as good as expected from long range (39%).

10. D.J. Augustin, Bobcats
PER: 13.75
It’s not easy being a point guard under Larry Brown, but Augustin is getting big minutes (28.4) and is producing 12.1 points and 4.1 assists per contest. His shooting (40%) is pretty suspect, though he’s very solid from long range (39%).

Notes:

- Marreese Speights leads all rookies in PER (20.44) but only plays 15.9 minutes per game.

- Anthony Morrow and George Hill just missed the minutes per game cutoff. Otherwise, they would have been on the list.

- Given how tough it is to play point guard in the NBA, Derrick Rose still gets my vote for Rookie of the Year. The Bulls are asking him to play huge minutes, which is going to take its toll over the course of the season.

Here are a few surprise players that are filling the box score early in the season. All players are seeing at least 20 minutes of playing time per game.

POINT GUARDS

#8 Nate Robinson (21.33)
15.0 ppg, 4.3 apg, 3.9 apg, 2.8 spg
Thus far, Robinson is flourishing off the bench in Mike D’Antoni’s high-octane offense. He’s knocking down shots and is sharing the ball well.

#11 Ramon Sessions (19.36)
17.2 ppg, 6.2 apg, 3.6 rpg, 1.4 spg
The 22 year-old Sessions is proving that his late-season run last year was no fluke. His fine play is making the Bucks’ decision to trade Mo Williams a lot clearer. It looks like he’s the point guard of the future in Milwaukee.

SHOOTING GUARDS

#4 Nick Young (23.33)
16.6 ppg, 2.0 apg, 2.0 rpg, 55.4% FG%
Yes, his line is thin (i.e. he doesn’t do much but score), but boy can he put the ball in the hoop. The Wizards are struggling, but Young is providing points off the bench.

#7 Rudy Fernandez (21.31)
13.7 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 1.8 apg, 42.4% 3PT%
Usually, it takes rookies a little while to adjust to the NBA three-point distance, but Fernandez isn’t having a problem. He’s in the running for Rookie of the Year.

#8 Roger Mason (20.96)
16.2 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 3.4 apg, 52.7% FG%, 56.0% 3PT
Mason is doing his best Manu Ginobili impersonation. It looks like the fifth-year player is starting to break out, and once Ginobili returns, he’ll give the Spurs a much-needed fourth scoring option.

SMALL FORWARDS

#2 Trevor Ariza (24.09)
9.4 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 2.0 spg, 60.0% 3PT
Ariza has been remarkably productive in limited minutes. He should be starting, but he needs to show that he has a consistent jump shot before Phil Jackson can use him to space the court for Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. For now, he’s bringing great energy off the bench.

#9 Thaddeus Young (18.12)
16.5 ppg, 4.3 apg, 51.9% FG%, 47.8% 3PT
After a stellar yet underrated rookie season, Young is making the most of the extra 10 minutes of playing time. He has shown great improvement from long range and from the free throw line (74% last season, 89% this season).

POWER FORWARDS

#7 Luis Scola (21.87)
13.0 ppg, 7.4 rpg, 56.7 FG%
He did much of his damage last season with Yao Ming sidelined, so it’s impressive that he’s been able to increase his rebound rate.

#13 Jason Thompson (19.71)
11.7 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 59.6 FG%
He’s not starting, but if he keeps this up, the Kings won’t bring the rookie off the bench for long.

CENTERS

#7 Nene (21.29)
16.2 ppg, 9.0 rpg, 1.7 bpg, 66.7% FG%
What is it with Brazilians and their one-word names? Nene is doing his best to make up for the loss of Marcus Camby. We all know that Nene is talented, but he just hasn’t been able to stay healthy. Maybe this is his year.

#8 Josh Boone (18.60)
9.0 ppg, 8.2 rpg, 1.4 bpg, 55.3% FG%
It’s Boone – not lottery pick Brook Lopez – that’s starting at center for the Nets. The team needs to rebound and he’s getting it done.

#10 Spencer Hawes (17.67)
12.9 ppg, 8.4 rpg, 2.0 bpg
Hawes filled in admirably for Brad Miller, and it looks like he’s going to be a solid NBA center.