Maybe one of the most interesting aspects of this draft is the number of lead guards who not only dominated their teams’ possessions in college, but also took a large number of their teams’ shots.  For whatever reason, all of these players are going to be forced to go from bringing the basketball up and looking for their own shot in college to being more of a “pure” point guard in the fact that they will be running an offense and looking to set up their teammates.

With that being said, I thought it would be interesting to look at eight of these shot dominant lead guards and see which one has the potential to become the best “pure” point guard out of the bunch.  Here are the nine guards we will be looking at today:

To be included on this list, you had to be in DraftExpress’ mock draft, be the primary ball handler of your team, average under 6 pace adjusted assists per 40 minutes, use more than 20% of your team’s possessions, while taking more than 20% of your team’s shots.  As you can see, outside of Jimmer Fredette and Kemba Walker, these are all guys who are probably going to be drafted in the second round.  If they want to make a roster, they are going to have to prove that they can play more of a traditional point guard role than they did in college.

To see who can become the best “pure” point guard, we are going to look at 2 different factors, hitting shooters and pick and roll playmaking.  We are going to look at tape of each player and give them a score out of 10 for each category:

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One of my favorite Xs and Os bloggers is Brett Koremenos over at HoopSpeak, so I was genuinely excited when he extended an offer to participate in a mock draft with him for HoopSpeak.com (you should be reading this site every single day).  Over there, Brett and I pretended to be a GM 15 times each, not trying to predict the draft, but choosing guys who we thought were the best fit for the team.  I think we did a pretty solid job:

1- Cleveland Cavaliers: Kyrie Irving. Irving played just 12 games in college due to a foot injury that kept him out for most of the regular season, but if you are the Cavs, you can’t really pass him up. Out of all of the players in the draft, I think he has one of the most pro ready games.  He’s very comfortable running the pick-and-roll and while he isn’t the most athletic guy, he can hang in the air and finish around the rim nicely against taller defenders. While there are things that he needs to work on (his kick out passes tend to miss his teammate’s shooting pockets), I think they are easily correctable if he puts the work in. All in all, I’m pretty certain I just chose Cleveland’s point guard of the future. – SP

Cavaliers Selection: Irving

2- Minnesota Timberwolves: On behalf of KAAAAAAAHN and the Timberwolves, I will select Jimmer Fred…kidding! I’ll take the logical choice in Derrick Williams. Williams and Irving are the two best players in this draft. Even though Minnesota’s roster is a jumbled mess of pieces that don’t fit any other player here is probably a reach. While I’m not as high on Williams as most, I think David West-ish numbers are a reasonable projection for his future and that type of production is not worth passing up to take a flier on someone else. – BK

Timberwolves Selection: Williams

Those were the two obvious ones, head on over to HoopSpeak and check out the rest!