If you're a believer that the NBA is a point guard league, the Eastern Conference standings provide strong evidence for your position. Of the top four teams in the East, three are led in scoring by their point guards. The one exception (the Chicago Bulls, where Derrick Rose is third in scoring) has a former MVP at the position. And the team in fifth, the Cleveland Cavaliers, have an All-Star point guard in Kyrie Irving.
But who's the best of the group? Let's take a deep look inside the numbers to find the East's top point guard.
Scoring
I find it instructive to graph the two primary elements of scoring -- efficiency, as measured by true shooting percentage, and volume, as measured by usage rate -- to see how players compare.
I've included league averages for both categories, as well as a line showing the typical tradeoff between usage and TS% for an average player. As has become typical for modern point guards -- who finish a higher percentage of their team's plays with a shot, trip to the free throw line or turnover than any other position -- 12 of the East's 15 primary starting point guards are average or higher in usage.
Four players are above average in both efficiency and usage: Irving, Brandon Knight, Kyle Lowry and Jeff Teague. Of these, Teague best combines both elements of scoring. He's got the highest TS% in the group (.604) while using plays only slightly less frequently than the other efficient high-scorers, Knight and Lowry. Teague may not be able to keep this up -- his TS% last year was just .541 -- but for now, he's the best scoring point guard in the East.
Playmaking
Let's take a look at a few key statistics for the top playmakers, ranked by John Hollinger's pure point rating (in this case, calculated by assist rate * 2/3 - turnovers per 100 team plays).
East PG Playmaking Stats
As the eye test would suggest, John Wall is far and away the top playmaker in this group. Lowry stands out in pure point rating because he's so sure-handed. That also works to the benefit of Kemba Walker, who is below average as a distributor but turns the ball over less than half as frequently per play as Wall.
SportVU data available on NBA.com/Stats suggests Lowry might be a tad overrated as a passer, since he generates relatively few secondary (i.e. hockey) assists. Intriguingly, Michael Carter-Williams of the Philadelphia 76ers actually rates third in assist opportunities (passes that would be assists if the shot were made) per play. While it's tough to say how much that ratio reflects the point guard's passing as compared to the shooting of his teammates, in Carter-Williams' case it's clear that the poor team around him is costing him assists.
Defense
East PG Defensive RPM
The chart at right summarizes defensive real plus-minus (RPM) leaders from this season among East point guards. Including 2013-14 ratings highlights how noisy these figures can be over a small sample. It's reasonable to conclude that Mario Chalmers, Lowry, Teague and Wall are all near the top of this group based on their consistent success.
According to NBA.com/Stats, the Wizards are allowing 12.9 fewer points per 100 possessions with Wall on the floor this season, the largest gap for any of their starters. Wall seems to have harnessed his athleticism defensively, and he's got the best steal rate of this group. (Chalmers and Payton are tied for second.) Lowry is a physical defender who compensates with strength for his small stature, Teague a good recovery defender and Chalmers a talented (albeit often frustrating) freelancer.
Ultimately, the best defender of the group might be Elfrid Payton, who has proved a quick study as a rookie. Thanks to his pressure defense, the Magic's defensive rating is 5.6 points lower with him at the point.
Overall
Putting these categories together, let's see how these players rate in a variety of all-in-one stats:
• PER (per-minute)
• Win shares (value)
• RPM (per-minute)
• Win% (per-minute)
• WARP (value)
East PG Value Stats
While the various statistics put these players in slightly different order, they're in agreement about the best point guard in the East. In a conference with three former No. 1 overall picks at the position, it's Lowry (taken 24th overall in 2006, 17 picks behind Villanova teammate Randy Foye) who has emerged as the best point guard. Lowry has the most complete game of the group, and has carried the Raptors near the top of the East without DeMar DeRozan. Remarkably, Lowry has never been an All-Star, but that oversight should be corrected soon.
Picking between Wall and Teague is more a matter of taste over the first half of this season, as different metrics favor different players. I'd lean in Wall's direction because of his superiority as a playmaker and defender and the likelihood that Teague falls off his current scoring pace. Still, Teague has proved that he deserves his first selection to the All-Star team as the leader of the East's best team.
An All-Star a year ago, Irving hasn't merited a return trip. Moving to a smaller role alongside LeBron James and Kevin Love hasn't boosted Irving's efficiency as a scorer as much as anticipated, and he remains a below-average defender. Statistically, he's struggled to distinguish himself from other score-first East point guards like Knight and Walker.
News and notes
• No East point guard is making more money this season than Brooklyn's Deron Williams ($19.8 million), who barely merits mention among the league's top players at the position. That's the fundamental problem as the Nets look to shop Williams, who still has two years and more than $43 million left on his contract beyond this season. It's hard for other teams to justify that kind of investment in a player who has been merely an average starter at his position.
Williams' difficulty staying on the floor makes matters worse. A fractured rib discovered in an MRI yesterday is the latest malady to befall Williams, who also missed time in December with a strained calf muscle. If Williams can't prove he's healthy before the trade deadline, Brooklyn will find him difficult to trade.
• Both first-round picks the Denver Nuggets acquired from the Cavs in Wednesday's Timofey Mozgov trade are protected. What are the Nuggets' chances of seeing them this season? Oklahoma City's top-18 protected pick is essentially lottery-proofed. If the Thunder make the playoffs, they will almost certainly pick 19th or later. In 1,000 simulations of the remainder of the season, Oklahoma City made the playoffs and kept the pick just 7.4 percent of the time. The Thunder miss the playoffs an additional 16.4 percent of the time, meaning Denver gets the pick in the other 76.2 percent of simulations. Most commonly, the pick falls between Nos. 19 and 21.
The other pick, from the Memphis Grizzlies, only goes to the Nuggets if it falls between picks No. 6 and No. 14. That means the Grizzlies would have to miss the playoffs, which is actually not inconceivable. It happens in 7.5 percent of simulations. (Hollinger's playoff projections, which are more sensitive to a recent Memphis downturn with Zach Randolph out of the lineup, say 12.3 percent.) Still, the odds are long that Denver will get both first-round picks in 2015.
• The standings say the Miami Heat are still an East playoff team despite being six games below .500. A glance at point differential tells a very different story. After their 16-point loss Thursday night in Portland, the Heat are now being outscored by 4.5 points per game, ahead of just three East teams: lottery-bound Orlando (minus-5.3), New York (minus-8.5) and Philadelphia (minus-13.3). Typically, a team with Miami's point differential would have a 13-23 record, which would be good for 11th in the East.
It's tempting to attribute the Heat's woeful scoring margin to extended periods playing without stars Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade due to injuries, but Miami's point differential is actually slightly worse (minus-5.3) when both players are in the lineup. That includes more losses by 20-plus points (four) than double-figure wins (three). Since scoring margin is a better predictor of future performance than winning percentage, there's a strong chance the Heat slip out of the playoffs. That's important for Miami to consider when weighing offers for forward Luol Deng like one from the Grizzlies reported by ESPN's Marc Stein earlier this week.
Follow Kevin Pelton on Twitter @kpelton.