Illustrations by Adam Villacin, design by Ringer art department Examining the five types of point guards in today's game reveals a vast and varied positional landscape—one that traces the evolution of basketball and reminds us that playing the point is (still) essential work From a bird's-eye view, most NBA basketball looks pretty much the same. Teams work toward the same shots from the same spaces on the floor, streamlined by the same idea of efficiency. There is more or less one collective shot chart these days—with some slight variations based on personnel, of course, but framed by what are accepted to be optimized ends. A corner 3 is a corner 3 is a corner 3. Except it isn't. Bring your point of view down to floor level, and you'll find entire worlds in the way those attempts are created. What makes a shot isn't where it's taken from, but how it came to be. An 18-footer from Luka Doncic has little in common with one from De'Aaron Fox. A James Harden pocket pass and a Jamal Murray pocket pass don't serve the same purpose at all—even if they both lead to a score. Every offense is its own ecosystem with its own way of life. If anything, the widespread agreement on what...