Breaking Mav: Who to start at point guard

The controversy at point guard has seemed to settle. Jameer Nelson is slated to be the starting point guard for the Dallas Mavericks, and Devin Harris will be his primary backup. Raymond Felton‘s role is still up in the air as he’s missed majority of the preseason and isn’t expected back soon.

Despite the position settling, the first installment of Breaking Mav will look at who’s the best option at the position.

***Breaking Mav Intro***

I did three season simulations. Each simulation had a different point guard starting. To try to neglect the impact of the backup point guard, I gave both guards just fifteen minutes each as the starter would play 28.

The rest of the rotation can be seen below. For each simulation all I did was swap one point guard with the starter. Richard Jefferson is missing from the screen but he also would play ten minutes a game in each simulation.

I turned off all injuries and CPU trades to try to keep each season as consistent as possible.

I also limited the simulation to just the regular season. While it would be great to see which point guard could lead the Mavs to the deepest playoff run, different match ups would drastically change the “fairness”.

Now that all that boring stuff is out of the way…here we go!

Jameer Nelson

With Nelson at point guard, the Mavs would go 46-36 on the season, which was good enough for 6th in the West and 2nd in the division.

Nelson would average 8.8 points and 7.6 assists for the team. The assists would top all the point guards in the simulations

Chandler Parsons would be the biggest benefactor with Nelson running the show. As you can see above, he would average a career high 19.6 points; he’d also average 6 rebounds and just under 3 assists. Monta Ellis and Dirk Nowitzki would average around 18 points each.

Devin Harris

Probably viewed as the best of the bunch, Harris would lead the team to 45 wins. Despite it being just one less than Nelson, that would be the fewest wins of the trio. The team would also finish 6th in the West but 3rd in the division.

Parsons would see his points decrease with Harris starting but not by a large margin. He, Dirk, and Monta would all average around 18 points.

Raymond Felton

Easily the least popular of the trio, he would be the best of the bunch. Felton would lead the Mavs to the 4th best record in the West at 48-34.

Felton’s 9.3 points would be the high of all the starting point guards. His 7.5 assists would place him right between Nelson and Harris.

Again, the Big-3 would each average around 18 points. This time Dirk would take his rightful claim as the Mavs leading scorer.

Sooo…..

The Mavs have three decent options at point guard and the 2K simulations see that. The gap between each isn’t much. We’ve seen similar assists, scoring, and points from the three, and the win totals weren’t too different.

No matter who starts at point guard, it’s apparent it’ll be the weakest link of the starting group. Dirk, Monta, Parsons, and Tyson will be asked to do the heavy lifting.