NBA Draft: Is Anthony Bennett A Bust? Depends On The Definition

A third-year player on his third NBA team, averaging 6.1 minutes, 1.3 points and 1.7 rebounds per game, is pretty readily identified as a journeyman, a guy who will carve out a pretty handsome living bouncing from town to town, up and down the dial.

Including those numbers from this season, this third-year player—still only 22 years old—has career averages of 4.5 points, 3.3 rebounds and 13.8 minutes per game on a shooting line of .388/.247/.652.

It’s the sort of statistical line one would expect from an unheralded second-round pick or perhaps an undrafted guy who beat the odds.

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However, when that stat line is put up by the first guy across the stage on draft night, the journeyman’s guide to the NBA universe no longer applies.

And so it goes for Anthony Bennett, the erstwhile No. 1 overall selection in the—up to this point, anyway—mostly God-awful 2013 NBA Draft.

That draft class was thought to be terrible from the beginning. No one was excited about anyone in that class, save for Kentucky center Nerlens Noel, and interest in Noel began to wane after he tore his ACL 24 games into his lone collegiate season.

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There was never a real consensus on which player would be the No. 1 overall pick. Looking back at the mock drafts from that year, it’s a hodgepodge of Maryland center Alex Len, Indiana guard Victor Oladipo or Noel.

The one name no one had at the top of their mock for 2013, however, was UNLV forward Anthony Bennett.

The kid from Brampton, Ontario, via Findlay College Prep in suburban Las Vegas and a single season with the Runnin’ Rebels was going to go in the first round.

NBADraft.net had him going 10th overall to the Portland Trail Blazers. Draft Express had Bennett going to the Detroit Pistons at No. 8. Chad Ford of ESPN.com had Bennett the highest, No. 4 overall (unless it was something lower and got changed post facto).

So Bennett got the yoke of being the top overall pick thrown around his neck, with expectations ratcheted up accordingly.

Suddenly, just having a nice career was no longer an option, not when you were taken in the same draft spot as guys with names like Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tim Duncan and LeBron James.

That there are also guys named Kwame Brown, Michael Olowokandi, Greg Oden and LaRue Martin who got taken in that spot is immaterial. If you’re drafted No. 1, you are supposed to be great and if you aren’t, a funny thing happens.

The guy and the team who drafted you get a pass, somehow.

When Bennett’s draft status is mentioned today, it’s in the context of what a huge disappointment he’s been. It’s seldom in the context of, “Wow, did Chris Grant screw that up.”

Chris Grant, for the record, was the general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers who made that ill-fated pick. Of course, someone held Grant accountable for something—he didn’t last the 2013-14 season before he was fired.

But ask any fan: It’s Bennett’s fault that he hasn’t lived up to the expectations that none of the people who make a living predicting draft stock thought he should have had in the first place.

There’s a broader context, however. In Bennett’s draft class, the best of the bunch so far is 27th overall pick Rudy Gobert, drafted by the Denver Nuggets and traded to the Utah Jazz. His 10.4 win shares are the most in his draft class so far. Mason Plumlee, selected by the Brooklyn Nets and now with the Portland Trail Blazers, is second at 10.1 WS.

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Thus endeth the list of 2013 draft picks with more than 10 win shares.

We’re not talking about a player such as Olowokandi, who was selected before all-time greats Paul Pierce, Dirk Nowitzki and Vince Carter in 1998, or Oden, who was taken before Kevin Durant, Marc Gasol, Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Mike Conley, among others.

The one exception to the rule seems to be Brown. Michael Jordan, the Washington Wizards’ executive who made the pick, gets most of the abuse for it.

But Elgin Baylor is hardly ever mentioned in conjunction with the Olowokandi selection by the Los Angeles Clippers. And I had to look up who drafted Oden for the Trail Blazers in 2007 (it was Kevin Pritchard, for the record).

Anthony Bennett hasn’t performed the way a No. 1 pick would be expected to. That’s a given.

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But if you go back and look at the pre-draft evaluations—both for Bennett and for what was never ranked as even a good class, much less a great one, there doesn’t appear to be anyone else in that group who would have lived up to those expectations, either.