Every NBA team’s greatest point guard of all time

Sacramento Kings — Mike Bibby

2001-2008
17.6 points per game
5.4 assists per game
3.2 rebounds per game

The Sacramento Kings have one great era. Since moving to Sacramento in 1985, the Kings made the playoffs 10 times. That’s not a lot. It’s even worse when we realize that Mike Bibby made the playoffs five of those ten times. Not only that, but Bibby won four playoff series in his time in Sacramento (and it should have been five, but we’ll get to that in a moment). The Kings won one other series without Bibby on the roster.

Listen, this wasn’t all Bibby, but he held a huge responsibility for winning those games and those series. Bibby was traded to the Kings after the Vancouver Grizzlies relocated to Memphis. He ended up pairing perfectly with Chris Webber, a player that so many coaches were trying to get the best out of. It turns out he just needed the right point guard to play with. Bibby helped the Kings to the best record in the league in his first season in the California capital.

The Kings won 61 games in the regular season, and then they pretty easily ran through the Jazz and Mavericks in the first two rounds of the playoffs. In the Western Conference Finals against the Lakers, most people are well aware of the crime that happened on the court in Game 6. The referees took over the game, and the Lakers were handed a win, that ultimately led to a series win in Game 7. It was an atrocity, and it probably changes the way we look at the Kings franchise as a whole, Chris Webber’s Hall of Fame credentials, and Mike Bibby’s legacy.

Either way, Bibby stayed with the Kings for seven total seasons. They never really had the playoff success they saw in their first year together. They were still a good regular-season team, but something didn’t gel like it did in that first season. Bibby still did enough in his Kings career to garner the notion as the best point guard in franchise history.