Gary Payton’s Bold Take on Russell Westbrook’s Triple-Doubles: His Assists Weren’t Affecting the Game as Our Assists Were

The pace of play in today’s NBA is faster, 3-pointers have taken over, and positions are much less clearly defined than they used to be. The rules haven’t changed much, but interpretation of them has. For instance, the Eurostep and step back are ubiquitous in today’s game, whereas in the 1990s, those things didn’t even exist. Even the way stats are tracked is different in today’s day and age, a point that rankles the old guard who didn’t get the benefit of the doubt in their time.

Gary Payton appeared recently on The Brownie and Rab Show, and the Glove touched on a wide variety of topics, including the way the point guard position has morphed from a pass-first facilitator in his time to more of a combo guard today.

They brought up Steph Curry and Damian Lillard as guys most fans consider to be point guards, but Payton pushed back on that because scoring is an even more important part of their game than facilitating.

“That’s a difference of what the era is now. We have put shooting guards as point guards now in the NBA,” Payton said. He went on to credit Chris Paul and Tyrese Haliburton as current players he considers to be true point guards because of their pass-first mindset and ability to manipulate a defense.

Payton currently sits 11th in the NBA’s all-time assist rankings, but he believes that the way the rules are interpreted now gives today’s players an easier way to catch him and other players of his era. Russell Westbrook, who has averaged a triple-double four times over the course of an entire season, was mentioned as someone who benefited from a looser interpretation of what constitutes an assist.

“Assists is not the same as when we had an assist,” Payton said. “Nowadays, you can dribble the ball three or four times and get an assist. And with us, we couldn’t count assists, if it was more than two dribbles they wouldn’t give us an assist.”

Payton is right that assist totals are inflated in today’s game, but the reason is up for debate. Assist totals are verified by more sets of eyes now than they used to be, so while people thought that John Stockton, for instance, had his numbers pumped up by local scorers, today that kind of thing can’t really happen. The prevalence of league-sanctioned gambling means there’s no funny business with numbers anymore.

Assists are really up because there are more possessions per game due to a faster pace of play, and today’s offensive innovation leads to more wide open shots. Whereas Payton might throw the ball to Shawn Kemp down on the block and then Kemp would post up, dribble a few times, and get a basket, today’s point guards are finding wide-open 3-point shooters, so less interpretation is needed when awarding an assist.

Offenses are more efficient than ever before, so naturally that will lead to higher assist totals. Of course, they don’t make defensive point guards like Payton anymore, and they didn’t hunt for mismatches back in the day the way they do now. Payton probably looks at the way the game is played now and wishes he could do his thing because who knows how great his numbers would look.

Payton was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013, so it still turned out pretty well for him.