You know how I know that Devonte’ Graham has OFFICIALLY made it as a legit point guard in this league?
He assisted Bismack Biyombo on five, count ’em FIVE buckets in this game alone.
It takes a point guard of exceptional skill to assist Biyombo even one time, much less five times. Only in the most straightforward of situations will Biyombo ever be able to put the ball in the basket, so a point guard who gets the ball to him in those spots is clearly seeing the game at a different level from everybody else. For example, you could lock Biyombo in a gym with a mediocre distributor like Collin Sexton and, even with the absence of defenders, Biyombo would not score even one time.
It’s too early to start throwing around career comparisons for Graham, but I’m doing it anyway. How does CHRIS PAUL sound to you? Sounds pretty good, right? Chris Paul is just about the only other active point guard who I would expect to have any success in getting Bustmack Bustombo to score points. We can consider this the second coming of Chris Paul on the Hornets, even though the first time Chris Paul was on the Hornets, he was in New Orleans on a technically different franchise.
If you’re disgusted by my optimism (which you should be; even I feel disgusted with myself [more than I usually do]), we can go ahead and say that Graham is the second coming of Bobcats-era Raymond Felton, just way less prone to gorging on cheeseburgers in the locker room while grossly burping.