Phoenix Suns: 5 goals for Dragan Bender in 2017-18
Dragan Bender is coming off a disappointing rookie year, but here are five reasonable goals for his second season with the Phoenix Suns to prove himself.
Heading into the 2017-18 NBA season, expectations for the Phoenix Suns are tempered, to say the least.
Coming off a 24-win season that resulted in the second-worst record in the league, the Suns are likely entering their eighth straight season without a playoff appearance. Years spent rebuilding through the middle have brought Phoenix only one winning season since Steve Nash left, and that doesn’t look like it’ll change this year given the brutal Western Conference landscape.
However, there’s reason for hope as the franchise enters its 50th season, mostly because the front office is finally committing to a much-needed youth movement to build for a future after the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs juggernauts have died down.
Devin Booker looks like the centerpiece at this point in time, with the No. 4 overall pick in this year’s draft, Josh Jackson, set to lend his two-way talents to the emerging rebuild. However, one player commonly overlooked in #TheTimeline by those outside the Phoenix fanbase is last year’s No. 4 overall pick, Dragan Bender.
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True enough, Bender’s rookie season was extremely underwhelming for a top-five pick, with the teenage Croatian averaging 3.4 points and 2.4 rebounds per game in only 43 appearances for the Suns — all while shooting a dismal 35.4 percent from the floor, 27.7 percent from 3-point range and 36.4 percent from the foul line.
However, the raw numbers of such a small sample size don’t paint the full picture, especially for an 18-year-old who was the league’s youngest player last season. Bender was always meant to be a project, taken for his ceiling more than any tangible impact he’d have in his first season.
Heading into a more confident sophomore campaign, here’s a look at five reasonable goals for Dragan Bender to convince his skeptics he’s still on the right path and reassure the fanbase he will one day become a franchise pillar.