When we ranked the summer's key big man signings recently, we noted that centers and power forwards have dominated the free-agent headlines this offseason. The flip side of that is that point guards -- the dominant position in today's NBA -- have lagged in this year's marketplace.
This is entirely a matter of timing. A number of really good bigs happened to play on expiring deals last season, while the top point guards were safely locked up. Even so, the point guards have somewhat rallied. Since the numbers in the previous piece were compiled, the collective projected WARP of free-agent point guards who switched teams has more than tripled, from 8.8 to 27.6. It was a late-blooming market, but we have indeed seen some shuffling at the league's most important position.
Before we rank the deals that landed point guards on new teams, let's again underscore the criteria. We're not ranking the players by projected WARP, RPM or any other metric, although the order you see here correlates strongly with those measures. We used those figures but strongly considered on-court fit and the value of the contract signed. That makes the final order a bit subjective, but it's a good way to evaluate the respective impacts these point guards will have on their new squads.
1. Mo Williams
Contract: Two years, $4.3 million
New team: Cleveland Cavaliers
Old team: Charlotte Hornets