316Hornets wrote:MotorKeepsGoing wrote:316Hornets wrote:I'm not seeing a big difference with spacing. What type of spacing was Batum giving compared to Lamb? Batum shot 33% from 3 and Lamb shot 28% last season. That's not much of a difference and Lamb didn't have the benefit of playing next to a playmaker like Kemba.
Lamb's also a spectacular ball handler that can cause defenses to rotate leaving better match-ups for MKG or Marvin to take advantage. MKG showed he could knock down the mid-range jumper last season and Marvin is still a threat from 3. Dwight has already showed he's not afraid to launch a few from deep either. The biggest issue I see if whether Dwight will be okay with Lamb taking on a bigger scoring load than Batum would. This means less touches for Dwight, so we'll see how he handles it.
Disregarding the fact that 5% is quite big. People know Nic is a good shooter though. His shot selection can be questionable and his tendency to look for contact on 3s drives down his 3P% quite a bit when he doesn't get it. You have to defend Batum from 3. In years past, Lamb just goes ice cold or gets hot from deep without much in between, and Lamb doesn't make the 3 a big part of his game.
That's like comparing Gerald Henderson to Kobe Bryant in terms of spacing, they both shoot about the same from deep but it's only because of shot selection. Kobe sees wayyyyy more defensive attention than Henderson for obvious reasons. Of course this is an extreme example and the difference between Lamb and Nic isn't that big, but you see where I'm getting at.
I get what you're saying, but Lamb was out there as a 1 man show last season playing with guys like Miles Plumlee, Christian Wood, etc. You think he's not going to get better looks from 3 with an actual post presence down low.
His effective field goal percentage is also better than Batum in almost every category. Teams are going to have to double team him when he has the ball. He is that good. His ball handling is amazing too man. He's able to drive to the basket and dribble around in traffic no problem. He'll disrupt defenses a lot more than 33% 3 pointer Batum.
Batum averaged 6 assists per game last year. He made Cody Zeller a better player via pnr and we needed Nic to perform the same magic with Dwight this year. I'm not sure another player on this team getting hurt could be as disastrous from the standpoint of incorporating Dwight.
Does anybody remember last fall, Lamb started out similarly hot?? Even made a couple of 3s, and we a were all like, woah he's breaking out! Guess what, he shot 28% from 3 last season, NOT acceptable for a SG in today's NBA. But you can't just look at 3 point shooting.
Lamb averages 1 assist per game. Lamb holds the ball and creates baskets for himself off the dribble - you can ignore that **** if he's meant to juice a 2nd team offense, but the starting 5 needs 3, D & playmaking (based on Cliff's avowal to play 4 out 1 in), Lamb's least skills.
I'd slide MKG & Marv to SG/SF respectively and start Frank at PF.
and if it came down to it I'd start Graham ahead of Lamb.
