Since I'm also giddy over Tywon Lawson's NBA/Nuggets debut...

...And since school is closed today, I decided to compare the debuts of Lawson with the ones of several other notable point guards that might be similar to Lawson. I will use Jameer Nelson, Ray Felton, Aaron Brooks, Tony Parker, T.J. Ford, and (even though he's a SG) Allen Iverson.


Read more after the jump!

     (Hat tip to basketball-reference.com for all the stats).

     I will start off with Jameer Nelson, since I firmly believe that, under the supervision of Billups, Lawson will blossom into a Nelson-type player/all-star. As I mentioned before in an earlier fanpost, Jameer Nelson was unamazing in his rookie season, and his debut was similarly like that. It wasn't until the second half of the season that Jameer started posting up more respectable stats. In his debut, Nelson went 0-2 from the field with a foul and nothing else in 8 minutes.

     Because Ray Felton had to play for the Bobcats, he had to start right away and he didn't get much time to acclimate himself to the NBA. In his debut, he shot 3-9 from the field, 0-4 from the 3-ball range, and 4-4 from the line for 10 points, 5 assists, and two rebounds with three turnovers and a foul in 23 minutes. I'm sure my previous sentence was a big run-on

     I felt like using Brooks because he's also a small poing guard and he also started his NBA career on the bench (he played behind Rafer Alston and Bobby Jackson). In Aaron's debut, he went 2-2 from the field and 1-1 from the line for five points and nothing else...in three minutes!

     Tony Parker started at point guard for most of his rookie season, although not for his debut. His stats ran like this: 3-8 from the field, 2-3 from the three point range, 1-2 from the line for 9 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, two steals, two fouls, and a TO in 21 minutes. Fun fact about the 2001-2001 Spurs (the team Parker was on in his rookie season): Malik Rose averaged 9.5 points and 6 boards for them off the bench...in 21 minutes. That means that if you extrapolate that to 36 minutes a game, he would have averaged over 16 points and 10 rebounds per game.

     Many casual NBA fans have no clue who T.J. Ford is. He's a skinny, injury-prone 6-foot tall point guard who currently plays for the Pacers (doh, that's why). However, he started his career with the Bucks, and he started all 55 games that he played in while sharing the PG spot with Damon "I'm-the-best-three-point-shooter-ever" Jones. His debut was pretty good, going 5-7 from the field, 0-1 from the three-ball, 1-1 from the line for 11 points, 7 assists, and a very surprising 11 rebounds.  

     Allen Iverson was drafted first overall by the Sixers, and he showed that in his debut, going for 12-19 FG, 2-4 three-point FG, 4-6 FT for 30 points, 6 assists, two boards, one steal...and five fouls and three turnovers.

     Looking over these stats, I know that rookie seasons (and debuts) are usually not great indications of how a player will fare over the course of their career. Hopefully, Ty Lawson's 17 points, 6 assists debut will be an indication of more things to come.