Golden State Warriors shooting guard Klay Thompson’s agent made a bold statement recently, saying that Thompson is the best shooting guard in the NBA. While Thompson has rightfully gained a reputation as a strong defender as well as an offensive threat, he is not the best two-way shooting guard in the NBA.
But I wanted to find out who the best two-way two guard in the league is and where Thompson ranks. To find out who is the best two-way shooting guard, I looked at two main metrics: the disparity between offensive and defensive performance, as ranked by ESPN’s real plus-minus, a measure of “two-way-ness”, and overall real plus-minus, or overall production. While RPM is not the catch-all measure of player performance, it provides a neat breakdown of offensive and defensive contribution. To account for both variables, I subtracted the percentile differential from the player’s overall RPM percentile. The results are depicted below in a table.
According to my findings, Thompson is a good two-way shooting guard; out of 81 eligible shooting guards, Thompson is ranked 11th, but he is clearly not No. 1. Thompson is one of the best offensive shooting guards in the league, according to RPM, and is also a competent defender, ranking in the 66th percentile. Players like DeMar DeRozan are inferior in both offensive and defensive production, but they are more well-rounded, resulting in them being ranked higher on the list.
None of this suggests that DeRozan or any player ranked higher on the list is a better player than Thompson. James Harden and Tony Allen are archetypical one-side-of-the-floor players, but they are still more valuable than, say, Allen Crabbe and Matthew Dellavedova, who ranked higher than both Harden and Allen. Thompson may not be the quintessential two-way shooting guard, but that says little about his overall talent.
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