Breaking down the point guards for the Dallas Mavericks

One of the most interesting positions of this new look Dallas Mavericks team is the point guard spot.

Last year, Jose Calderon was the starter with Devin Harris backing him up off the bench. It was a nice combo that was a joy to watch at times. Calderon was a great floor general, and it was nice seeing a competent point guard run the show after Darren Collison made me want to pull my hair out the year before.

But Calderon is now a New York Knick because of the trade that brought Tyson Chandler back to Dallas. In return the Mavs also received Raymond Felton, and were able to sign Jameer Nelson later in free agency. So the natural question is who is going to be starting on opening night against the San Antonio Spurs?

I think the Mavs like Harris more off the bench than the do in the starting lineup. He added another dimension off the bench last season and Dallas will surely want to keep it that way.

That leaves either Felton or Nelson. Either one will likely be better on the defensive end than Calderon was. As solid as he was at running the team, it got a bit tiresome to see quick and athletic guards consistently blow past Calderon. Felton and Nelson aren’t great defenders by any stretch of the imagination, but they will surely be at least a little better than Calderon was.

The one elite skill that Calderon had was his three-point shooting and his ability to spread the floor. That opened up the Mavs offense and gave them an absolutely lethal option from behind the arc. Between both Felton and Nelson, I think Nelson can come the closest to replicating that.

Nelson isn’t the three-point shooter that Calderon is, but he is still a very good shooter on the right team. Last season, Nelson shot 34.8 percent from behind the arc, and the season before that he shot it at a clip of 34.1 percent. Those numbers don’t seem very impressive, but keep in mind that this was after Dwight Howard left the Orlando Magic.

In the 2011-2012 season, Howard’s last in Orlando, Nelson shot 37.7 percent from three. The season before that? 40.1 percent. And before that? 38.1 percent. Nelson’s career high of 45.3 percent came during the 2008-2009 season when Howard was at his peak and the Magic went to the Finals.

The past players that Nelson has played with over the last two years has been Victor Oladipo and Nicola Vuecvic. Clearly, Nelson had to take more three pointers, meaning he missed more and his percentage went down.

This year he’s going to be playing with Chandler, Dirk Nowitzki, Monta Ellis and Chandler Parsons. Nelson’s three point shooting, and his shooting overall, will increase by playing on this Mavs team. The same thing happened last year to Ellis during his first season playing with Nowitzki and the Mavs. Hopefully, this helps create around the same threat and floor spacing that Calderon created.

Felton has been a good three point shooter in his career, but he fell out of shape during his last year in New York and had off the court issues that affected him. Hopefully, Rick Carlisle can get the most out of Felton and get some of those percentages to go up. I could see Carlisle starting Felton and using Nelson off the bench to have the same spark off the bench that he had in Vince Carter. Felton would start, but Nelson would end up playing more minutes.

But for now, I think the Mavs will end up going with Nelson as their starting point guard out of the gate. At first glance, the point guard may seem like an iffy position for Dallas, but I think it will end up being a solid strength.