It's criminal not to be playing Lampe in the situation the Suns are in. There is nothing else that's close to as important to the future of the team as speeding his developement. I'm not suggesting that he can profitably play 35 minutes a game or stop us from losing but give the guy 8-10 minutes a game so he has a chance to earn more. I don't see how it could hurt the team morale - it might do wonders for it if they saw a big dude on our side who had a semblance of a game. It would keep his enthusiasm up for all the learning he's going to have to go through. He'd go into next summer knowing from his own experience what he had to work on instead of only hearing it from the coaches. Actually, that would start immediately. If he played the rest of the games with that level of PT it could knock a year off the time he'd be ready to contribute.
We might learn enough about him doing this to help with decisions in the draft and in signing FAs or making trades.
There is benefit to the team if D'Antoni actually has an offensive scheme in mind - he might run a high post offense with Lampe playing center or he could put him in place of Amare at PF and play him in the low post. It's very hard to simulate the latter with Shawn playing PF and Casey at SF.
Let's see the downside to doing that is that we may lose a few games we'd have otherwise won, and thereby get a better draft pick. Heck, I can live with that.
It's too bad D'A opened his mouth to the press about his plans for playing Lampe strictly in garbage time - he probably feels like he has to stick to it. It was always a dumb plan but it's all the worse if he sticks with it for such a poor reason. He's already shown a remarkable propensity for sticking a foot in his mouth whenever he talks to the press.
