evo i ovaj misli da nije sve izgubljeno
Dragan Bender, dipping his toe into doing things
Smart feet and good feel are nice, but to be a productive NBA player, you actually have to, like, do stuff. Bender has spent too much of his brief NBA career not doing stuff. In early March, he became the first player since 2012 to log 36 minutes in a game and attempt one or zero shots and zero free throws.
Bender is 20. He missed almost half his rookie season. Perhaps any expectations are unfair. But at some point, the No. 4 pick in the draft -- even a 20-year-old -- has to try things. Good news: Bender is flashing a friskier handoff game -- complete with delightful play-action-fake keepers:
(Yeah, he missed. Baby steps. At least you realized Bender was on the floor.)
The fully formed version of Bender -- the one that will play for a competitive NBA team in the early 2020s -- will look something like this: a big-man fulcrum who can shoot, drive, and pass, and run the offense for snippets. He's even doing the thing where he fakes a handoff, pitches the ball to another teammate along the 3-point arc, and runs right into a pick for that player:
That is a classic Marc Gasol/Nikola Jokic/Boris Diaw move. Since early February, Bender has set almost 26 ball screens per 100 possessions, up from 18 before then, per Second Spectrum tracking data. That is partly the result of Tyson Chandler's disappearance (has anyone seen Tyson Chandler; is he in a hair salon?) but it is a legitimate version of the "player development" teams trumpet when they mothball veterans and try to lose.
The Phoenix Suns still need to decide what position Bender plays, and what sort of frontcourt partner he requires (the Bender-Marquese Chriss tandem has been a disaster) but these flashes are encouraging.