Los Angeles Lakers: Should Avery Bradley play point guard or shooting guard?

We’ll examine whether Avery Bradley is best suited to play point guard or shooting guard next season for the Los Angeles Lakers.

The majority of Los Angeles Lakers fans believe that Avery Bradley should be slotted in as a point guard next year. However, there is an active minority contingent of Lakers devotees who strongly think that Bradley is not a point guard and that he should play shooting guard.

Before we scrutinize Avery Bradley’s strengths and weaknesses, we must review his position history to make it clear that he’s played significant time as a PG and as a SG.

During Avery Bradley’s first four seasons in the NBA, he spent the bulk of his minutes on the court playing point guard for the Boston Celtics.

Here’s the percentage breakdown of Bradley’s time as a PG:

• 2010-2011: Time spent as a PG: 92%
• 2011-2012: Time spent as a PG: 67%
• 2012-2013: Time spent as a PG: 83%
• 2013-2014: Time spent as a PG: 70%

Throughout those first four years, Bradley served either as the Celtics backup point guard or as the starting PG when Rajon Rondo was injured.

Then during the 2014-2015 season, Celtics head coach, Brad Stevens, moved Bradley into the starting lineup to play shooting guard next to Rajon Rondo to form Boston’s backcourt. On December 20th Rondo was traded to the Mavericks, so Bradley became the Celtics starting point guard. He only spent a short time as Boston’s 1st string PG, because the Celtics landed Isaiah Thomas at the trade deadline, which pushed Avery back to the Celtics starting SG.

After Isaiah Thomas joined Boston he played starting point guard, and Bradley opened games as a shooting guard, so he spent less time at the 1 spot.

For example, during the 2016-2017 season, Avery Bradley spent 82% of his playing time as the Celtics shooting guard.

In the summer of 2017 Avery Bradley was traded, and he proceeded to occupy the shooting guard position chiefly. Here’s the percentage breakdown of Bradley’s time as a SG after he was dealt from the Celtics:

• 2017-2018: Time spent as a SG: 97% (Pistons)
• 2018-2019: Time spent as a SG: 64% (Clippers)
• 2018-2019: Time spent as a SG: 85% (Grizzlies)

It’s easy to see that during the first half of Bradley’s career he was used principally as a point guard, then during the second half of his time in the NBA, he worked mainly as a shooting guard.

Now let’s inspect Avery Bradley’s performance on defense and offense throughout his time playing point guard and shooting guard in the NBA. Then finally we’ll come to a decision about which position he should play next season for the Lakers.