What's Up With The Law? Has The NBA Figured Out Denver's Ty Lawson

You know the old adage.  If you are not getting better you are getting worse. Your competition knows when you've won 57 games and prepares accordingly.

The Nuggets are like scared orphan's who just got placed into a safe home, but are afraid to trust so they revert to old habits. Whenever you are using athleticism and not smarts to ignite your hoop  game, you are one Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose, Ty Lawson, Kenneth Faried athletic move away from recovering from an injury.  Athleticism gets you points, but it rarely wins you games, and the legs only have so many of those type of plays in them.  Close games are almost always closed out on the free throw line or with a second chance opportunity, meaning the first chance usually fails.

Ty needs to get to the hole and teams realize it, so they have to be sacrificing something.  I saw Ty draw a triple team to stop his penetration but you can't be passing and dribbling at the same time. Ty has never been good at using a pick.  None of the Nuggets do this great, but Ty is one of the worst.  His love of the dribble forces the pick to happen off the dribble leading to the illegal pick you see called a lot on the Nuggets.  Even with his poor use of the pick, his speed forces defenses to back up and give him the room to shoot if he would come off the pick shooting.  Ty has also never been good at coming off the pick and shooting immediately, without extra dribbles..

I was a big time Nene fan who kept saying (to my brother that I argue with over these things) that he would break out someday and we would be sad if we gave up on him.  He argued that potential is overrated.  After a few years, you are what you appear to be. Only the truly great players add to there game in a real way.  It appears that I lost that argument rather soundly.  So soundly that I am about to apply it to Ty.

Is this the best we will ever see from Lawson?  Explosive?  Yes, if he is healthy or confident, but a style of game that lends itself to neither.

I'm putting down this keyboard and praying away that very notion.