In the draft, the Pacers took a flyer on Lance Stephenson with 40th pick in the NBA draft.  I thought this was an interesting draft choice when it was made because Stephenson is a very talented player whose attitude caused him to drop.  With that being said, I thought he had a pretty good chance of making the Pacers, and that was before they announced that they thought Lance Stephenson could be a point guard.

The transition from shooting guard to point guard isn’t as easy as it seems, especially if you are doing it in the NBA.  It isn’t just dribbling the ball up the court and initiating the offense.  You need to make sure everyone else is in their spots, and most importantly, you need to balance distributing the ball among your teammates and attacking the basket.

Pros

Tyreke Evans Lite

Now, I am not going to say that Lance Stephenson is going to have the same impact as Tyreke Evans did last year (Evans had a year of experience running the point before coming to the pros), but you can see a little Tyreke Evans in his game.  He has a similar combination of size and speed, and it gives him an advantage when being defended by smaller point guards:

Here, Stephenson’s defender actually gets his hands on the basketball, but he isn’t big or strong enough to get the ball away from him.  This allows Stephenson to get into the lane and finish at the rim.

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