Break down of future Pro’s: Ty Lawson

I have decided that I’m going to do my own breakdown of each of the four players from North Carolina that are going into this year’s NBA Draft. I’m doing this because the more I roam around the internet (web boards/chats), the more I’m seeing who thinks this and that about any and all of these four players. I will start with the junior point guard from Maryland, Ty Lawson. As you can see from my last post about the players and what the mocks are saying of them, Lawson, who has hired Jeffrey Field (Peake Management Group) as his agent,  seems to be a mid to high teens pick, putting him on the borderline of the lottery picks. I will give you where I see Lawson going after I give you my breakdown of him.

The first drawback you’re going to hear about Lawson is his height. Some say that he is 6′0″, but some have him shorter than that, and in the NBA that seems to be a bit smaller than what the teams want for their floor generals. On the other hand, while you can’t teach height, teams also know that you can’t teach speed either, and anybody that’s seen the junior guard play knows that even dribbling he is the fastest player on the floor. That speed makes him as good a transition player as you can hope for, add to that the excellent hands he has and the above average ball handling skills and you have a one man fast break.

And that fast break is going to come also because Lawson has gotten better  on defense each of his three years in college, having truly stepped up with position defense last season and getting better at pressuring the ball and jumping into the passing lanes. But when Ty Lawson can’t get the points on a fast break he can still find the lanes into the paint and can either go up strong (due to his muscular body) or can pass it out with his good court vision and passing skills. In other words, in my opinion, this point guard can hit the shot when needed from outside, even if he does need to maybe be more reliable on the mid range one (especially if he has to dribble and shoot), or can slash into the low post.

There is no way that a head coach should be scared to give Lawson the ball. If the assist to turnover ratio from last year is any indication of what he can do at the next level, he’s going to be extremely important for any team that chooses him. Having played at North Carolina you know that he comes from a system where you work hard each and every day and you work for the team (the sentence “the name in front of the jersey is always more important than the one on the back” is a motto at UNC), making him what I would consider to be a complete point guard. I think what Ty Lawson is going to need is one thing: experience. And that will only come from being able to play and get his feet wet. Once he does that I think that his weaknesses will diminish and his strengths will overpower anything that could make a blemish.

So, where is Ty Lawson going to go? I firmly believe that the first three picks are sealed up by Blake Griffin, Ricky Rubio and Hasheem Thabeet. Not sure who is going to go first, who second and who third, but I believe these three will be the top picks. That leaves us 11 teams in the lottery and about half in need of someone that can be a floor general, and that to me means that Ty Lawson won’t fall out of the lottery picks, and will go anywhere from 8th to 14th, which means in dollars, getting anywhere from $ 1,471,900 to $ 2,069,400. He will be able to prove himself at the work outs he will do before the season, the one that I am sure he is going to is the one on June 3rd (Group Workout), but I am almost positive that he will go to others as well.

Here is a small video about Lawson from ESPN: