The documentation calls for a a feature layer of type Point, polyline, polygon or multipoint. I know that some geoprocessing tools will let you supply a geometry for input and a object for output, such as obj = arcpy.near_analysis(pPoint,junctionLyr). The error message I'm getting is telling me that my in_features is of the wrong type when I provide a point object. I suspect that the tool wasn't designed to work that way.