What's Lillard's ceiling?

[actrived]

For whatever reason, people just don't want to see the new guys get better than the revered older guys. I don't think it has anything to do with Lillard being 22...that's just the easiest thing to pick on.

The following may have not been majority opinions, but they were fairly common in the early career of these players:

Roy barely had any upside.
Durant was just going to be an inefficient chucker.
Harden wouldn't be good as a 1st option.
Rose is a SG not a PG.
Love is just a stat-padder who players no defense.
Z-bo is a black hole, will never be an all-star.
Yao is just tall and has no skill/is too soft.

It's all just premature bulls*** for all those players and it's the same for Lillard.

I agree with your overall point completely, but I don't remember hearing the "Durant will be a chucker" opinion. I remember hearing that he was soft and would never be anything other than a scorer until he put on weight.

Either way, everyone clowns on players when they begin their careers. At that point, I think, it seems more common to point out what a player isn't than what he is, or even make quick assumptions based on a small sample size.

[Mr. Crowley]

This is Roy all over again with people saying this is he's ceiling.

[Mr. Crowley]

This is Roy all over again with people saying this is he's ceiling.

[moss_is_1]

I really don't know why people use age to compare veterans to rookies.

Just for an example, I saw someone saying Holiday and Lillard are around the same age and Holiday is better now so he will be in the future too. How does that make sense? Holiday has had the privilege of 3 full NBA seasons under his belt. Who cares about age really? Sure it's nice to draft someone like Holiday at 19 or w/e and then have him be this good at only 22...but drafting someone who's 22 years old and having him be great right out of the bat isn't much different then having to wait 2-3 years for someone so young to develop.

Generally draft time is when older players fall because they are considered to have "low upside" and Gms fall for a young guy with "huge upside" which can obviously really burn teams. Of course there's the guys like Wes Johnson who really burn someone, but if you do your homework as a GM you could see that he sucked.

[a_sensei]

The five players who have came up most are Billups, Hardaway, Marbury, Rose and Arenas. I don't think he'll reach the superstar level of Rose, but I think he'll have more extended success than Marbury and Arenas.

I compared them at age 22 (Hardaway at 23 which was his rookie year, the rest were either 2nd or 3rd year guys which gives them the advantage of NBA experience) and Lillard ranks right in there.

That was Rose's great year and he is a notch above all of the guys. Of the 6, Lillard ranks 1st in EFG%, Tied for second in TO%, 3rd in PER, Ast/TO Ratio, TS%, ORtg, WS, 3P% and 4th in DRtg. The only places where he was low on the list are FT attempts and steals, but he is still in the same range as some of the others in these areas.
Someone earlier said that Lillard has the advantage of playing on a team with few offensive weapons. He is in a lineup where all five guys average in double figures. His usage is much less than Arenas, Rose and Marbury at the same age. As others have said, 22 is not old. Hardaway and Billups improved dramatically as their careers went on, and Lillard is ahead of where they were offensively at the same age.

There was an influx of athletic/fast ball dominant PGs in the mid 90s- early 00s that peaked early on bad teams and never learned the skills they would need to be high level PGs on good teams long term... (Marbury, Francis, Stoudemire, Arenas maybe Baron Davis as well). I think that's where the new idea of PGs peaking in their early to mid 20s came from. I don't think Lillard will end up fitting into this group. He's a scorer, but he's an able and willing distributor who plays within the offense. I think I can count the number of times he has come down and pounded the ball for 20 seconds on one hand. Most of the guys in this group made a living doing that.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... 01&y6=2011

[Curmudgeon]

Of the names mentionned, IMHO Tim Hardaway is the player whose game most closely matches Lillard's. Two other guys he reminds me of are Joe Dumars and the current mayor of Sacramento, CA.

[Bskey]

I agree with your overall point completely, but I don't remember hearing the "Durant will be a chucker" opinion. I remember hearing that he was soft and would never be anything other than a scorer until he put on weight.

I remember it quite well. Lots of people were talking about how he was inefficient and taking too many shots because of it. I remember saying it was stupid because he's rookie and the potential is obvious.