While these two short point guards both stand tall, the numbers favor Chris Paul over Isiah Thomas.
When you watch Chris Paul, you're watching the best point guard since Magic Johnson.
To many fans, that assessment may sound extreme. Paul is not usually hailed as an all-timer, yet, and his jersey sales rank only 10th among players. Though he plays in big market L.A., he has never quite captured the public's attention like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Kevin Durant have, despite turning a moribund franchise, the Los Angeles Clippers, into an entertainment tour de force that just might win a title.
But while "best since Magic" is not Paul's public identity, he's putting up numbers that should make it inevitable. Just for starters, among all the players in NBA history, he's No. 7 in player efficincy rating and No. 4 in win share average. And impressive as the numbers are, they can't even fully convey Paul's human-metronome control of team pace and prescient court vision. We are watching one of the all-time greats, night after night, in between fretting over this wild Lakers season.
But to grab the spot behind Magic, Paul has to supplant Isiah Thomas' pesky legacy. As it stands, CP3 has already passed and lapped Zeke statistically, while paradoxically lagging far behind him in cultural consensus -- probably forever. How does that work?
When ESPN convened a greatest point guards rankings in 2006, Isiah Thomas was third behind Magic and Oscar Robertson -- meaning Isiah is No. 2 in the modern era, the best modern PG not named Magic and the best small point guard ever. That's an ethereal plane in the basketball world, and all the more impressive considering Isiah's slight size.
It's that small stature that makes CP3 comparisons natural, along with the amazing ball skills used by both to dominate while surveying the court and making plays.
Isiah's rep is based on more than dazzling play, of course. He won two titles and made three NBA Finals in a basketball golden age. If sepia tones could glitter, they'd burnish our memories of how Zeke's fiery leadership helped a blue-collar team overcome hoops leviathans such as Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.
This is why it's a little jarring to look at Zeke's production and see how meager it looks when stacked against Paul's. If you compare their careers at age 27, Chris Paul emerges with the better assist percentage, rebounding percentage and true shooting percentage. At age 27, Paul's PER is 25.5 to Isiah's 19.1. And Paul has collected 38.9 more win shares to this point -- that's an approximation of how many wins CP3 has created above Isiah's.
Paul turns the ball over less often, steals the ball more, shoots better from the line, shoots more often from the line, and shoots better from beyond the arc. You can call Zeke more of a "pure point guard," but just know that both averaged 9.8 assists through age 27 -- and Paul did it on 1.4 fewer turnovers.
It's hard to find anything, anything at all, that Thomas did better than Paul on a day-to-day basis. This isn't a matter of advanced stats preferring Paul, it's a matter of nearly every statistic preferring Paul.
Isiah's game had flaws, and we tend to forget them because he tended to forget them on the biggest of stages. When you deliver a 25-point NBA Finals quarter on a pretzel of an ankle, you blot out memories of a turnover-prone high dribble, and rim-prone floater. When your team takes out Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson in their prime years, you earn a lot of respect.
Those sepia-glitter Isiah Thomas memories matter, and nothing will take them away. If he's overrated, then it's for the best of reasons: The guy performed when the eyes of the world were upon him.
Thomas also benefited historically from something that was less within his control, even if he contributed to it: He played with an elite defense. His Pistons teams were top-three in the league in each year of that three-season NBA Finals span. But few would say that he was a better defender than CP3.
I don't wish to trash Isiah's legacy, or insinuate that he was unimportant to that championship success. He was crucial. I merely wish to point out that a good player can receive a lot of extra praise for having played on a great team, especially if the team excels at defense, an aspect of the game that fewer focus on. If you're a scorer on a great defense, chances are that a disproportionate amount of credit will bounce your way.
Paul, in contrast, hasn't been in the ideal situations for receiving credit. He has been brilliant in the relative obscurity of a mismanaged New Orleans team, and L.A.'s second favorite squad. Start his career almost anywhere else besides the NBA's smallest market, and Paul's basketball genius garners far more recognition from the casual fan. Place CP3 amid some better teams, and that genius translates into "the eyes of the world are upon him" playoff moments.
Regardless, we should realize and appreciate how Chris Paul is providing the best point guard play we've ever seen on a night-in, night-out basis. This gets lost sometimes when we compare players across eras: Playoff success is not the same as a consistently better regular-season product.
What also gets lost when we do historical comparisons is that our collective memories are far from perfect. The Moneyball revolution loudly shouted that baseball's closest observers were wrong-headed about the sport. Basketball has never significantly looked backward, en masse, when given the improved analytics of the past 10 years. We rely on whatever solidified into conventional wisdom, way back when. It's fair to question what we all "know" about the past.
It's fair to declare that Chris Paul has played his position better than Isiah Thomas did on most nights.
