bwgood77 wrote:I also think, in time, that Chriss and Bender can both play anywhere from 3-5, particularly in small ball lineups which are becoming more prevalent. Chriss has shown he can rebound and isn't intimated by anyone, the way he played Porzingis to Draymond Green. Chriss is also quick enough to play on the perimeter, and Bender moves well enough laterally to do the same and with his length he is so disruptive, particularly for guards stretching the floor. I think they work will be able to work very well together in all kinds of lineups.
You know, twenty and thirty years ago, many teams would have hardly even considered Chriss and Bender "power forwards" at all—too thin, not enough muscle. Clubs probably would have used them at that spot at times, but given their physiques and also their ball-handling and rangy shooting skill, most teams would have seen them as natural small forwards.
So, yeah, they are players who should create plenty of versatility and flexibility. Think of former Suns such as Danny Manning and Clifford Robinson who, over the course of their NBA careers and their time in Phoenix, matched up at small forward, power forward, and center depending upon the lineup, the situation, the coaching strategy, and so forth.
Manning constitutes a great example as perhaps the league's top reserve in the late nineties. (He received the Sixth Man of the Year Award in 1998 and probably deserved it in 1997, too.) Late in the '96-'97 season, as the Suns surged to become one of the league's hottest teams, he was usually playing center—and never small forward—in lineups that featured either four guards or three guards and a natural small forward (Cedric Ceballos). But in '97-'98, when the Suns overwhelmingly featured more conventional lineups with two natural big men and sometimes three, Manning probably matched up as a small forward most often and rarely as a center. Occasionally, head coach Danny Ainge even experimented with Manning as a "shooting guard" that year, and in earlier decades, teams might have made similar experiments with Chriss and Bender. I recall, not too long ago, viewing a playoff game from the mid-eighties where the Celtics featured four natural front-court players simultaneously (aided, of course, by the versatility of Larry Bird). Those occasions proved rare, much like the occasions where the Suns used Manning as a "shooting guard," but they existed.
Of course, Bird and Manning both spent four years in college and led their universities to the NCAA title game (and to the title in Manning's case). Will Chriss and/or Bender ever reach an All-Star level? We shall see, but they are very young, and their versatility means that they should be able to play together in much the same way as Manning and Clifford Robinson played together for Phoenix. Late in the third overtime session of Phoenix's quadruple overtime victory at Portland on November 14, 1997, Manning (who scored 35 points on 14-21 FG and 7-8 FT, plus 10 rebounds) posted up the Blazers' small forward, the smaller Stacey Augmon, on the right block and drew a double-team from Portland's power forward, Brian Grant, who had been guarding Robinson on the perimeter, high on the right wing. Manning delivered a bounce pass to the open Robinson, who buried the game-tying three-pointer. (The other players on the court for the Suns were guards Kevin Johnson and Jason Kidd and center John "Hot Rod" Williams.)
I could see Bender and Chriss one day playing off each other in similar fashion. Certainly, that functional flexibility would be optimal, although we will see if—in this New Age—they can develop post games like Manning and Robinson.
