I can't believe that Sirron really likes Bender...I mean how often have you seen him play? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? He is an 18 year old European. His body is completely unproven to be able to handle the NBA workload increase. He plays like 10 mpg on a team that plays once a week. Even as a bench player, the increase for him will be very significant...then comes the other parts like rebounding, toughness, defense etc. Is Bender going to be hot garbage? probably not but possibly yes. He is certainly not a player that can help us. And all this talk about he is the next Porzingis...hell even Porzingis isn't a sure thing and he also just averaged 14/7...which isn't exactly out of this world. I would still probably take Russell ahead of him anyway.
It's a bold prediction, but was based on a few things I explained in my post. One of those things was the C Bags having the 4th pick. I doubt it works out now, but I was thinking out of the box. If we signed a max level FA at SF, I would be willing to take risk on a future star at one of the toughest positions to fill. (Center) It didn't make sense to sign a max FA at SF and draft Ingram to me. If Ingram can contribute now, we can spend less than max on a FA SF, and fill out the roster better. It's growing on me. My big balls idea had some depth of thinking to it, more future assets, and definitely a belief that Bender will turn into something special down the road. Time will tell. No balls, no glory!
To be honest, I did see an issue too in drafting Ingram and signing a max SF, who is in mid 20s...in this case though, I would trade the pick. Bender is a project, but if we ended up with 1 or 2 star players, I would trade the pick for "win-now" players. I still can't say much about Bender because honestly, I have seen just one game in which he played like 15 minutes. Just not enough to say he is good or bad. But I read so many people online arguing tooth and nail that he will be bust/great and I'm certain most haven't seen him play except for a few youtube videos.
easier said than done. The best player now? The best player down the road? The one with the highest ceiling but bigger bust potential? Etc. Can't say take the best player available because you don't know who the best player is going to be. Its all opinion.
Bender has fallen to 6th in Chad Ford's latest mock draft. So the one guy that had him way too high earlier on had him falling, hopefully plummeting eventually, nowhere near our radar.
I've said before that if Bender were in the US and Porzingis wasn't so well received that he'd be valued similarly to Labissiere. Last I saw Labissiere was going 10-15 or so.
Was thinking about the upcoming season and couldn't help but bump this thread to brag a little, because my assumption was pretty spot on. The one thing I didn't think would happen though, is overpaying for those solid vets. That being said, even after the play of our young guys in Summer League, I still stand by 35 wins. In fact, I wouldn't even be mad if BSPN came out with less and said 30 wins. It's still progress.
^^^ I think 35 wins is a solid estimate. It's not over the top, it's not too pessimistic, it seems realistic. Mitch or someone said we want to or hope to double our win total from last season, and 35 would be just about that.
