Two years after being the No. 1 overall draft pick, Anthony Bennett has signed a one-year contract for the veteran minimum to play for his hometown team, the Toronto Raptors.
After landing in Cleveland after one season at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Bennett was shipped to Minnesota along with fellow Canadian and fellow first-overall draft pick Andrew Wiggins in a deal that brought Kevin Love to the Cavaliers. Despite solid play as part of Team Canada at the 2015 FIBA Americas Championship, the Timberwolves bought out Bennett and the free agent in dire need of a fresh start should find that with the Raptors.
For the Raptors, this is a no-risk decision that comes with no guarantees.
Toronto has no obligation to give Bennett playing time, as he’s signed for the minimum and will start the year behind Patrick Patterson and Luis Scola on the depth chart, with the versatile James Johnson likely to receive minutes at power forward ahead of the Canadian as well. This is a “show us what you’ve got” situation where Bennett’s work in practice and performance whenever he gets a look will dictate his time on the court over the course of the season.
For the struggling for top pick, that might be the best situation he’s been in so far in his career.
There is a ton of pressure that comes with being the first-overall selection and even more when few people believe you should have gone that high. After entering his first training camp out of shape and dealing with injuries, Bennett got included in the Wiggins-for-Love deal last summer and a many wondered if a fresh start in Minnesota would help him take a step forward.
It didn’t — the Wolves were a mess, again, struggling to find an identity while having too many guys that play the same position, including Bennett, who is too small to be a power forward, but too big to be a small forward and doesn’t shoot well enough to merit much playing time anyway.
Now he lands in Toronto on a team with a clear identity and a sound foundation. They’ve been to the playoffs each of the last two years and should get there again this coming season, with or without Bennett. Everyone on this team knows their role and what is expected of them, which should allow Bennett to enter camp, work on his game and try to figure out what his future holds.
And here’s the thing: his future might be playing in Europe as the biggest bust in NBA Draft history, but it costs the Raptors next to nothing to bring him in this year and see if they can find a role for Bennett going forward.
Could Bennett develop into a poor man’s Paul Millsap? Why not? The Atlanta Hawks all-star is a 6’8” power forward who didn’t start stepping out and knocking it down from beyond the arc until later in his career and took four years to become a regular starter in Utah.
Could he become a Brandon Bass-type – a guy that averages 10 and 6 in a little more than 20 minutes as a spot starter? The first two years of their careers are comparable and Bass played five seasons before becoming a double-digit scorer and regular contributor in Orlando.
There is room for Bennett to carve out a role on an NBA roster in the future, even if it’s as a guy that gets 10-12 minutes a game. That’s not what you’d expect of someone who went first overall, but everyone needs to stop thinking of Bennett in those terms because after two failed seasons, no one should still believe he’s capable of reaching the heights you expect from the No. 1 pick in the draft.
He’s now a reclamation project and a roll of the dice for the Raptors.
