5 NBA players who should be playing a different position

4. Dragan Bender

In this year’s NBA Draft, Dragan Bender was one of the most intriguing prospects. Here was a big man with size and the ability to shoot. He was not Kristaps Porzingis with his length but he was one of those favored stretch bigs.

The Phoenix Suns, though, were a weird team for him to land on.

They spent their first draft pick on springy power forward Marquese Chriss. He would need to be close to the basket as he learned and developed. They already had former top-five pick Alex Len and veteran Tyson Chandler. They were stacked at the forward positions.

And so Bender has been forced to adjust. He’s still technically playing power forward for most of his minutes but on offense he’s almost exclusively standing on the perimeter as a spot-up threat. Bender has not played very much this year — 12.7 minutes per game in 38 games played — and his development has been a slow one. But he has taken 81 3-pointers on 124 field goal attempts. Shooting 32.1 percent on those 3-pointers.

The 7-foot-1 big man has rarely ventured into the paint this year. He has taken only 27 field goal attempts within five feet of the basket. And for the year, he has three post ups.

Three. Post. Ups.

For a 7-foot-1 big. Bender needs to put on weight and he is perhaps not quite ready to be a regular contributor to the NBA. And his shooting is a big reason the Suns drafted him.

But the Suns have to find a way to develop Bender and use his size to their advantage. He’s potentially the most versatile player on their roster but he’s being used in the most vanilla way.