CBS Sports ranks Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as 11th-best point guard
The NBA is in its golden era of point guards and trying to rank them is a reminder of that as the list includes several of the best, young players in the league.
A panel of CBS Sports reporters decided to rank the top-22 point guards in the league heading into the 2022-23 regular season.
The panel includes Colin Ward-Henninger, Jack Maloney, Sam Quinn, Brad Botkin, James Herbert and Jasmyn Wimbish.
The Oklahoma City Thunder finish with just one entry with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. There is no mention of Josh Giddey as a top-22 point guard. It’s not known what the reasoning behind this is — whether it’s due to the ambiguity that comes with labeling Giddey a certain position or whether it’s because the panel simply does not believe Giddey is a top-22 guard.
Looking through the other CBS Sports positional rankings, Giddey is not mentioned in the top-22 either, so it appears the latter is the case.
Which 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 rankings of whatever position the CBS Sports panel labels him as. 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 their reasoning behind it.
List
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No. 11: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
“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”
