Who’s Greater: CP3 or Steve Nash? | MailBag
In this edition of MailBag, I figure out if the Spurs were a superteam, find out who was the shortest blocks leader, and decide who’s a greater PG.
Ya know that GQ series called “X Goes Undercover” on YouTube where celebrities and pro athletes answer questions they find on sites like Quora or Reddit?
This article is like that.
I’ve watched a few of those and just liked the idea of it. It also looks fun to answer random basketball questions from those sites.
So, here are some interesting questions I found on Quora that I’m going to investigate:
Do you consider any of Gregg Popovich's Spurs winning championship teams to have been a superteam?
According to Wikipedia, a superteam is a team that “has three or more Hall of Fame-caliber players who decided to join together in pursuit of a league championship.”
Under this definition, the late-90-to-mid-2010 San Antonio Spurs would not be considered a superteam.
The reason why is that they weren’t top players from different teams who decided to link up to win a title, like LeBron, D. Wade, and Chris Bosh did.
The Spurs’ superstars (David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Kawhi Leonard) were all drafted by San Antonio (or traded for on draft night) and were developed by the team.
They weren’t stars on their own individual teams before joining other stars to form one dominant club.
If anything, the Spurs were a Big 3.
Who is the shortest player to lead the NBA in blocks per game?
The shortest players to lead the NBA in blocks per game were Ben Wallace and Andrei Kirilenko, who both stood at 6 feet 9 inches.
Wallace led the league in 2001-02 with 3.48 blocks per game (played 80 games) and Kirilenko led the NBA in 2004-05 with 3.32 blocks per game (played 41 games).
However, they may have been shorter than what their listed heights are because, during the time that they played, the NBA didn’t require players to remove their shoes before measuring them.
Who is the greater point guard, Steve Nash or Chris Paul?
This is actually a really tough question for me to answer because I like both Steve Nash and Chris Paul, and both players are phenomenal.
But if I had to choose, then I am going to try to break it down by achievements and accolades.
Steve Nash is a two-time back-to-back MVP. He was also a 3-time All-NBA First Team, 8-time All-Star, and 5-time assists leader.
Nash has never made an appearance in the NBA Finals.
But he did lead the Phoenix Suns in the mid-to-late 2000s to 5 50-plus win seasons, with two of them exceeding 60 wins.
He was also pivotal in the Dallas Mavericks’ success in the early 2000s, helping them achieve 4 50-plus win seasons in a row.
Chris Paul, on the other hand, has never won an MVP title.
But he has been on the All-NBA First Team four times and on the All-Defensive First Team seven times. Additionally, he’s a 12-time NBA All-Star.
Paul was also the NBA assists leader five times and NBA steals leader six times.
He has also led a team (the 2021 Phoenix Suns) to the NBA Finals.
Additionally, he played a big role (and often led) in helping 4 of his teams break franchise win records:
2007-08: New Orleans Hornets (56-26)
2013-14: LA Clippers (57-25)
2017-18: Houston Rockets (65-17)
2021-22: Phoenix Suns (64-18)
From these stats and accolades, I’m going to have to say that Chris Paul is the greater point guard.
Nash is a 2-time MVP, but CP3 has achieved so much more individually and team-wise.
Final Thoughts
There you have it -three in-depth answers to three interesting questions I found.
But here’s a question for you: Do you consider teams like the San Antonio Spurs, teams that were built via drafting and trading and not paid for through free agency, to be superteams?