Interesting. I’m curious how the playoff on/off numbers of other notable elite small NBA PGs stack up. I’m thinking about small All-Star PGs like Mike Conley, Chris Paul, Johnson Stockton, Mark Price, Allen Iverson, Steph Curry, Kyle Lowry, VanVleet and Ja Morant.
One thing I like about Rob over Darius is that Rob is far more athletic. Rob had a 42” vertical in the combine. Darius is estimated to have a 35” vertical at most. As part of having more fast-twitch muscles for leaping, I suspect Rob also is quicker, including lateral quickness on the defensive end.
This is what I keep coming back to regarding Garland/Dillingham- Rob is a superior athlete by a good margin.
My sense is that Fox might be a better comp for Dilly, which would be a pretty positive outcome imo
- Even though Donte isn't a short PG, I included him just to emphasize how HORRIBLE he has been. This is across 54 playoff games with four different teams. His teams are bad when he's on the floor and really, really good when he is on the bench! I mean, it couldn't be more stark.
- You can see that Darius Garland is the second worst on this list when looking at the difference between his team's performance when he is on versus off the court. That's a 12.4 point swing (not quite up to DDV's 16.4 point difference)!
- TJ McConnell's are kind of what you'd expect from a solid backup PG. Things don't crater when he's on the floor and the team does marginally better when he's off the floor. TJ measured a half inch shorter than Rob Dillingham.
- Ja Morant's on court rating isn't very good, but at least his team doesn't benefit from him sitting on the bench!
- Allen Iverson's team did better when he was on the bench than in the game. Not what I thought would be the case.
- Mike Conley and Chris Paul-led teams definitely have a drop off when they sit.
- Payton Pritchard, another backup PG, looks really good here. Here is a bench player that genuinely makes his team better when on the floor (and Boston has still been pretty good when he's off the floor).
- Overall, you can't conclude that short PGs = playoff doom. However, none of the starters here have won a ring either (VanVleet won his ring when backing up Lowry).
