bwgood77 wrote:bwoolf2 wrote:Qwigglez wrote:Len is also looking good. Either we are horrible at developing players, or we aren’t putting them in a position to succeed.
or the more likely explanation, its preseason...
Neither are great, but Len developed quite a bit last year, and Bender probably will. We had awful coaching with Watson, and of course 3-4 coaches for guys which obviously didn't help development, but one big problem is just giving up on guys too quickly. Len would have been a solid backup C for years, and for cheap and Bender would have been dirt cheap with much higher potential upside than Kaminsky and Diallo.
If I'm just looking at this year, I take either of Kaminsky or Diallo over Bender, at least for this team. Kaminsky was the first player off the bench against Minny, which shows, I think, how much we value maintaining a high level of offense throughout the game. We'll see if Dragan maintains a high 3FG%, but he's still a couple years away from being an on-ball option on offense. He can be useful in certain contexts, but if he's not ready and steady with his shooting, it'll be hard to give him minutes when it matters.
.... That said, MIL has him on a 2 year deal at the minimum. Pretty solid. I'll be rooting for him.
.......... This just reflects the problem with NotMy draft strategy, which was to draft whatever player they projected would have the best overall career. He ended up drafting players who were *years* away from being ready for professional basketball.
Bender is probably worth that minimum deal. But how would I feel about paying him $7 million for the right to match any contract offers he would have received in 2020, with a $12(ish?) million cap hold? Bad. I understand that we could have re-signed him for Diallo's deal, but it's the unsteadiness and unpredictability we don't need. All our guys can play. Can Bender? Maybe! Don't really care much any more. We're free!