https://youtu.be/s1N1LeKOxg4
Sometimes you look at a guy’s college stats and think “how did this dude ever make it to the NBA”. With one-and-dones, the college stats aren’t as important, likely everyone knew they were an NBA-caliber talent anyway. But these four-year players, that’s a long time to get an accurate read on them.
Greg Stiemsma is the big one here. How a guy who played four years in college, averaged a peak of 3.5 PPG per game, managed to stick in the NBA for four seasons is the third biggest mystery in the universe after “Bigfoot” and “Why did Jennifer stop loving me”. I will never stop wondering about this. Tommy Heinsohn even frickin’ compared him to frickin’ BILL RUSSELL. WHAT THE HECK.
Which brings us to the topic of today’s discussion, Anthony Lamb. As the Nuggets commentators helpfully pointed out, he’s the only player in the entire history of University of Vermont basketball to make the NBA. As far as I can tell, Vermont is one of those colleges who has a basketball program only because that’s just what colleges do. They’re not one of the flashy teams who get all the high-caliber recruits, they don’t play in the high-profile matchups, sometimes they play a good team and manage to not get embarrassed.
Note: North New Hampshire Bible College does not count as a “good team”.
Lamb played four years for Vermont, and he actually had a nice junior season, averaging 21 and 8 on 50 percent shooting. But then he regressed, hard. Worse scoring, worse percentages, that’s not what you want to do when you’re having your final audition to maybe squeeze into the NBA as a seriously marginal end-of-bench scrub. If I was a GM, and I saw what he did that final year in Vermont, I’d say “no thank you, can someone find out what Doron Lamb is up to?”. Speaking of which, can someone find out what Doron Lamb is up to? I need to know for… reasons.
But Lamb managed it. He squeezed into the NBA as a seriously marginal end-of-bench scrub, and the thing with seriously marginal end-of-bench scrubs in the NBA is that if you give them a ton of unearned minutes, sometimes they can reward you with a nice, solid point total. But 21 points, for a guy like Lamb, is far beyond “solid”. This is unprecedented. He may have been putting up numbers against the likes of Harry Heroin and Isaac Inbred from North New Hampshire Bible College, but this is the NBA. It takes skill to put 21 points in the NBA, against NBA defenders. Skill that Lamb, apparently, has.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be working on getting Doron Lamb back in the league.