Yes. He was point guard in high school, and slated to start at point for Arizona. He was more of a combo guard at UA, since they didn't need him to run point full time with Nic Wise, and his talent on that Arizona team was utilized better as a scorer than a playmaker (considering he was one of the only people on the team that could score time in and time out).
point guard or not, I'm sure that as the best player on his team, his role was to score more than to distribute.
Bayless has always been the point guard but more importantly, he's always been the best player on every team he's played on. That means he was always coached to drive the ball, and to shoot. In other words, he was a scoring point guard, not a distributor. So, he might be accustomed to playing with the ball in his hands, but he's not necessarily used to slicing up a defense with an eye toward passing. He can learn, though. He's smart and a hard worker.
He was a scoring point in high school and he played a lot of shooting guard next to Nic Wise at UofA ... so to answer your question ABM, he's never been a traditional pass-first point guard, he's always been primarily a ball dominant "guard" who likes to attack the rim and once upon a time was a really good mid-range shooter with so-so court vision, questionable point guard instincts and an unquestionable level of competitiveness and work ethic. I'm still somewhat hopeful that he'll turn into a pretty good player, but I'm just not sure that's going to happen playing alongside B-Roy, I'm anxious to see if the two months of the off-season have yielded any positive developments and if he'll be able to utilize Cunningham and Pendergraph (two 4 year college players) in Summer league.
According to Quick, Bayless has not been in Ohio. Also, Quick said that Bayless admitted to him that after playing the 2 last summer when Koppenen was the point, that he got a really big head and thought the NBA was going to be easy and that he was severely humbled.
Bayless was havig fun with Quick. Bayless was in Ohio with Oden and Conley Jr. Yes, Jerryd played PG all through HS and in college until someone got hurt.
There seems to be some confusion on Bayless' time at UofA. He started his first several games as the teams starting point guard. He lead the Pac-10 in assists and was much higher than Westbrook, and actually had twice as many assists as Rose in those first few games. It became apparent to the Coach that the best two guards were his two point guards. So, he played Wise at the point and moved Bayless over to SG. His first four games at UofA he had 5, 4, 9 and 6 assists. After that, Wise started getting more minutes at PG and Bayless more at SG.
So he averaged about 6 assists a game in those games. Nice. I have faith in Bayless I want him to set the record straight about playing with Oden in Ohio though. That situation annoys me. Oh yeah and rep'd for knowledge dripping like so many pearls from your giant anthropomorphic dustball with two legs. I'm talking about the old ESPN commercials for those that don't get the ref. Watch this one to get the idea of what KNOWLEDGE is: [video=youtube;ToZVLysOpDw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToZVLysOpDw[/video] And watch this one to LOL. [video=youtube;jauti8wYD6A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jauti8wYD6A[/video]
