I'm glad there are people who disagree with me -- I'd sure like to be wrong about this. I'm not buying the Lamb ceiling talk. Lamb put up strikingly similar shooting and efficiency numbers to Ray Allen (Lamb's are actually better), and I view them as similar prospects in many ways. I think Lamb's scoring was scalable and that he could have even scored more on similar efficiency if he wasn't playing alongside so much talent. I know that everyone wants athletes in the draft, but you can't tell me that many of the most successful shooting guards of recent vintage were athletic. Brandon Roy was never an above average athlete. Neither is Ray Allen, Rip Hamilton, Joe Johnson, Michael Redd, Kevin Martin, James Hardin, Jrue Holiday and Lou Williams. It's all about shooting, scoring, drawing fouls, handling and decision making and Lamb has all those skills. Everyone is chasing after the next Dwayne Wade, which is fine, but you don't have to join the pack. With the 29th pick in the draft I would have taken someone I view as having an elite NBA-ready skill set.
Ray Allen, Roy, JJ, Rip and James Hardin were thought of as outstanding prospects, right? Holiday and maybe even Lou Williams are closer to Teague as prospects, no? Maybe he is Michael Redd #2. I liked this draft and it seemed very deep. I would have had no arguments if Bulls picked Lamb and I would have loved if they paid for a pick to go get him. But the consensus does seem to be that Teague is a different tier of prospect than Lamb.
This all strikes me as backwards. Every team rates prospects differently, and every person on every team, rates prospects differently. The only way we know how teams really viewed Teague is where he was picked during the NBA draft, and that was at the end of the first round. Would Teague have slipped further into the second round than Lamb if the Bulls hadn't picked him? We don't know these things. All I know is I watched a fair amount of both of them and was impressed with one (Lamb) and not the other.
I can't believe that there could be any argument that Ray Allen, Roy, JJ, Rip and James Hardin were thought of as outstanding prospects and better prospects than either Lamb or Teague. As for Lamb vs. Teague, all we have to go on is the mock drafts and words of people like Chad Ford in terms of concensus.
It's hard to believe that anyone who was available as #29 pick has enough upside (before we see them play) to make that kind of difference. The way you come up with a Taj at #29 is by seeing something in him that the other teams passed on for the first 28 picks.
