Trio of young shooting guards have teams thinking championship
Photo Credit: letsgowarriors.com
There has been some sentiment in recent years that the shooting guard position was a dying breed in the NBA. The position still isn’t all that deep in terms of elite players, but thanks to a talented group of youngsters, it’s looking a lot stronger. Specifically, James Harden, Klay Thompson and Jimmy Butler have the position looking bright for the future.
The shooting guard conversation starts with Harden, who is having a historically great season. The Houston Rockets guard scored 44 points in a win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday, raising his scoring average to a league-leading 27.0 points per game. He has gone over 40 points in three of the last six games and has gone over 30 points in 11 games this season.
Harden is also averaging 7.0 assists on the year, which ranks in the top 10 and is tops among shooting guards. Harden’s superb offensive play and improved effort defensively has the Rockets at 20-7 despite prolonged absences of Dwight Howard and Terrence Jones, and the 25-year-old is a bona fide MVP candidate. Harden and the Rockets also have eyes on a championship, although 16/1 odds have them only seventh in the Western Conference pecking order, according to Bovada.
A team with better odds to win it all is the Golden State Warriors, and Thompson is a big reason why. Thompson has always been known as a knockdown shooter, but his improved all-around game has the Warriors sporting a league-best 23-3 record. Golden State has 5/1 odds to win the title, which is tied with the San Antonio Spurs for second-best behind only the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Thompson really began to show his improvement during the summer with Team USA, and after receiving a $70 million contract extension before the year, that has carried over to the NBA. The 24-year-old is averaging 21.7 points, 3.6 rebounds and 3.4 assists while shooting 45.8 percent overall and 44.1 percent from three. All of those numbers would be career-highs, and he has also been strong on the defensive end of the floor.
Photo Credit: NBA.com
Paired with Stephen Curry, the “Splash Brothers” have established themselves as the best backcourt in the league. However, those two could soon be threatened by another duo: Butler and Derrick Rose.
We’ve all seen what Rose can do when he’s healthy, and he has shown flashes of returning to his former glory when he has been on the court this season. But the massive strides made by Butler have been almost as big a story as Rose.
Butler suffered through a rough offensive season last year, averaging 13.1 points while shooting 39.7 percent overall and 28.3 percent from three. This season, he’s averaging 22.1 points while shooting 48.6 percent overall and 34.7 percent from three after betting on himself when he and the Chicago Bulls failed to reach an agreement on a contract extension.
Not only is Butler more healthy this year, but he also put in copious amounts of work in the offseason. The 25-year-old returned with a better off-the-dribble game and a dynamite mid-range game, and these improvements have him as a near lock for the Most Improved Player award and the Bulls as an even bigger threat to win a championship. Chicago has 15/2 odds to win the title, which is good for fourth-best in the league.
Butler and Thompson both have to prove they can keep up this type of production over the course of a full season, but it’s looking more and more like they can. Harden is already a proven big-time scorer, although he must sustain the defensive effort. One thing’s for sure, all three of the Rockets, Warriors and Bulls need their stud shooting guards to be at their best in order to win a championship.
