In a Q&A with Kings.com, Quincy Douby says he's been working all summer on his point guard skills, particularly working on his off-hand.
At this point, Undoubylievable is the back-up point guard (for all intents). For all purpose, the back-up should be some wild combination of Ron Artest, Francisco Garcia and John Salmons. Those guys can handle the ball -- they all might hold the ball too long and one of them might show signs of recklessness at times, but they've been passable when needed at point guard. The survivor of the Mustafa Shakur/Orien Greene standoff will also serve as a backup point guard... but expecting said survivor to log more minutes than, say, Ronnie Price 2006 (150 minutes played) is expecting too much. Unless one of them blows the doors off preseason, Douby is your back-up point by name.
In Quincy's last college season at Rutgers, only one player in the entire nation carried his offense's load more than Douby. Still, Quincy had a marvelous shooting year -- .515 on two-pointers, .401 from three, .847 from the line while taking 38% of all his team's shots while he was on the court. His assist rate was strong for a gunner (25.2) while his turnover rate was passable (14.2) for a guy controlling so many possessions on such a weak overall team. (By comparison: in his penultimate college season with a far more talented Louisville team, Francisco Garcia had shooting percentages of .496/.366/.877, assist-turnover rates of 24/19.9, and took 24.9% of his team's shots while on the floor. Ken Pomeroy's figures say the strength of schedule for opposing defenses for each team was comparable.)
Clearly, Douby can shoot. You don't fluke numbers like that taking that many shots in that good a conference. Eddie House didn't shoot as well or as often as Quincy in college, and House has turned into a solid role-player in the NBA. But House has never had designs on being a point guard. He may have played a spare minute there in Sacramento and Phoenix, but show me one game where House actually tried to be a point and you can slap me in the face and call me Roshawna.
The next comparison which springs to mind for Kings fans has to be Bobby Jackson. Like House, BoJax exists primarily as a point-guard-by-name/size-only. Jackson's has career average of 4.8 assists per 40 minutes. By comparison, gunner Mike Bibby's lowest single-season assists per 40 minutes figure is 5.6. In his Sactown stay, Jackson served to bring the ball up and do one of the following: a) pass to Webber/Divac in the high post; b) take a screen and drive to open space/the hoop; c) jack up a three. There was no 'roll' on BoJax's screen-rolls. No knock on Jackson, one of my favorite Kings ever: The extent of his point guard skills was the penetrate-and-kick, which is something even Kenny Thomas can accomplish on occasion. Again, it's no knock. BoJax wasn't a point guard -- he was a damn firefly who could score on any defender the league threw at him, and he was among the most passionate players we've ever seen. (And he was a helluva guy.)
Can Douby get by like Bobby did? That has to be the goal. Don't fret because Geoff Petrie spent a #19 pick on someone whose ceiling is a great sixth man combo guard -- Jackson was extraordinarily important to those glory teams. I mean, from 2002 to 2005, Bobby's average annual PER was 18.2. He was tremendous. Douby can be tremendous too, he can live up to his nickname. We've seen one indication already; the kid is 23 years old.
Sure, make him work on his off-hand skills -- it can't hurt. But the absolute key for this team to get the most out of Quincy Douby isn't to make him a point guard, it's to let him be himself. Douby is not Steve Nash, he's not even Mike Bibby. He is a shooter, a scorer, a gunner. Let him eat pain patate.