Thursday, February 26, 2009

Which Point Guard Would You Take To Lead Your Team In The NCAA Tournament: Gary Parrish Got It ... Right?

Yesterday, we wrote a column critiquing the decision of Gary Parrish to select Steph Curry as the point guard he would want to lead his team through the NCAA tournament.

Well, he caught wind of the post and was kind enough to email me a response:

First, thanks for the note and the kind words. I've got your blog bookmarked, and somebody had actually already sent this to me.

As for your post, I don't completely disagree with your points, but I think you're coming at the question differently than it was presented (or at least differently than I did). I wasn't asked who would I take as my guard. Or shooting guard. Or who I'd want to play beside Stephen Curry. I was asked a very simple and specific question, and that question was who would I want starting at point guard for me from the list provided by the reader.

I guess I could've explained that I don't want to consider Curry a point guard, that I would take Ty Lawson and then put Curry beside him, but that seemed like a lot of trouble. Thus, I decided that if I could only pick one guy off the list, and if Curry was labeled a point guard for these purposes, then there's no way I was passing on Curry, not after what I watched him do in last season's NCAA tournament.

In other words, I interpreted the question this way: Who is the one guy on this list you want in March?

The answer to that question is Stephen Curry.

But if you want to take it deeper, what I'd really like to do (if it's all up to me) is use Ty Lawson as my point guard, Stephen Curry as my shooting guard and James Harden on the wing. Then I'd put Hasheem Thabeet in the middle and place Blake Griffin beside him, and I think I'd be ready to march to the Final Four, barring a concussion to a key player, of course.
I can't really argue with that.

Anyway, a big thanks to Gary Parrish for getting back to one of us little guys so quickly.

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