back to the lecture at hand, this is an impossible execrcise. here's why- we've left the "greatest PG of all time" echelon and moved squarely into the tier below that, which makes "ranking" these guys almost exclusively subjective based on a litany of factors, both between the players themselves (i.e. career stats vs prime abilities) as well as those of us attempting to have this debate (do I value passing and defense more than scoring and shooting- what era did i grow up in- from which era are the rules- and so on).
to me you can't really rank these guys in a vacuum because there are simply way too many factors and question marks that all of us would have to agree on to come to an understanding of *how* to rank these players. so to me it's less about "ranking" them, and more about just talking about their different strengths and weaknesses, which eras they would thrive in, and who their teammates would need to be.
these guys all played the same position, but they are such different, and flawed, and imperfect players that each guy's value goes up or down depending on his coach, teammates, era, team play style, etc. even if you try and make it "you're starting a team today and you *have* to start by choosing one of these PGs" then it's still going to come down to personal preference (i.e. do I know that i want a build a team that will run up and down, do i want to draft the best possible players and build the system around what I have, do I want to play completely different style, etc).
Stockton and Payton are the most solid all around guys. One is the steals and assists leader and a member of the Dream Team, the other is one of the best perimeter defenders ever, one of the strongest minded players ever, and one of the best trash talkers ever, and he was an a over average offensive player as well. You can't go wrong with either one, and each has fewer/less severe glaring holes than the other three. If you want your team to get up and down eschewing defense for scoring then the answer is Nash and it's not close. He's also a warrior and a winner, even if he never won a title. Kidd is an absolute dynamo but you really need to build a specific type of team around him, and can't just plug him in to any lineup like you can with some of these other guys. And Chris Paul should probably be considered a unanimous top 5 PG of all time based on his skill and career stats, but everyone in the NBA hates him, he sucks as teammate, and he's not a winner. I wouldn't want him on my team no matter what.
So there you go. How can I rank this second-tier group of PG's when they're all such drastically different players with different skill sets and glaring flaws? Based on everything I've just said it would seem that my breakdown of these guys would look like this:
Payton/Stockton
Nash
Kidd
CP3
and that's with me acknowledging that the guy who I have waaaaay behind everyone else might be more talented than Stockton, my co-no.1. hence why i don't see a way to rank these guys in a vacuum.