Interesting.
AEM at The Fifth Corner has a great rundown of the buzz(or lack thereof apparently) around Ty Lawson in the pre-draft activities. In short NBA GMs are not that high on Lawson placing him outside the lottery at present. Draft Express has this to say:
One player who really doesn’t seem to have very much positive buzz these days is Ty Lawson. “Injury prone” one assistant GM calls him. “A backup point guard…he’s 100% behind Jonny Flynn” another NBA representative says. “He’s a product of North Carolina’s system” a third told us. Lawson seems to be outside of the lottery at the moment, but still has a good chance to be picked by two teams looking for point guards in the late teens, Philadelphia (#17) and Atlanta (#19). He’ll have to keep Eric Maynor at bay, though.
The injury prone statement is understandable. Often times that is not meant in a negative way nor does it question a player's toughness but simply means that the player seems to find a way to get injured. All three of Lawson's major injuries in the past two years were freaky in every way. Even the ankle sprain versus BYU in the 2007-08 season was odd. The 2nd ankle injury was Ryan Reid's fault and the toe injury was just as odd an injury as they come. Still the question lingers because Lawson has missed games on three separate injuries in two seasons.
As for Lawson being behind Syracuse's Jonny Flynn, AEM thinks Flynn is more turnover prone. I did not see much of Flynn play other than the 6OT game versus UConn in which he almost singlehandely kept the Orange in the game. Based on the stats elevating Flynn over Lawson does not make much sense. Lawson took better care of the ball and was a better shorter while running a much faster offense and having to play a more hectic defense. Flynn played zone at Syracuse which has to make his NBA learning curve a little steeper than Lawson's on defense.
Speaking of which. I don't get the "product of the North Carolina system" remark. You mean the same system that produced James Worthy, Michael Jordan, Kenny Smith, Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, Antawn Jamison and Vince Carter? Maybe they meant the Roy Williams North Carolina system. Well Roy had Paul Pierce and Kirk Hinrich at Kansas as well as a few other good NBA players. In fact I would think the UNC system, as it is now with the uptempo offense would be ideal to produce NBA players.
Then again I have long given up trying to figure out what standard NBA GMs use.