NBA Draft Bust Week: Anthony Bennett, the quintessential bust

Anthony Bennett might go down as the biggest NBA Draft bust of all time, but more parties than just Anthony Bennett deserve the blame for that.

If a player’s reputation as an NBA Draft bust is determined by both his draft position and lack of production in the pros, Anthony Bennett may have taken the cake — and eaten it too — as the bustiest of all draft busts.

More than Michael Olowokandi. More than LaRue Martin. More than Greg Oden, who at least had injuries to blame. More than Markelle Fultz, even if Markelle Fultz were to never play another NBA game. Anthony Bennett was drafted No. 1 like each of those players, yet somehow, he underperformed more than any of them.

There are a myriad of factors that contribute to a player earning the dreaded label of draft bust. The higher a player is drafted, the higher the bar is set for expectations. The lower the production, the further away that bar looks. But it’s more than that; overdrafting, poor team fit, being unable to adjust to the speed and physicality of the pros, defensive shortcomings, injuries, joining dysfunctional franchises with subpar player development — all of these contribute to the birth of a draft bust.

The Step Back‘s own Trevor Magnotti highlighted the biggest reasons behind highly touted prospects becoming busts … and Anthony Bennett checked off every single damn box he outlined in that four-part series.

Bennett’s story has quickly become ugly legend. He was taken with the first overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers. He entered the league trying to rehabilitate from a shoulder injury and struggled with weight and conditioning issues. He started his NBA career by going 0-for-18 from the field and was traded after just one season for Kevin Love.

From there, Bennett somehow couldn’t crack the rotation of a Minnesota Timberwolves squad that won 16 games. He’s bounced around five different G League squads since 2015, even suiting up for Fenerbahce overseas before being released. As Magnotti pointed out in his piece, Bennett is the shortest-tenured No. 1 pick who didn’t suffer a major injury since the 1960s.

He’s played a grand total of 151 NBA games since being drafted at No. 1 more than six years ago. He’s a career 26.1 percent 3-point shooter, has recorded just 77 assists in 1,905 minutes and averaged 4.4 points and 3.1 rebounds per game on 39.2 percent shooting over his four years in the league, all four of which were spent with a different team. He’ll now be suiting up for his fifth team, the Houston Rockets, in as many seasons.

His production is the definition of an NBA Draft black hole in almost every sense, and his effort seemed to have been sucked right into it along with everything else.

Nobody wound up dwelling on the Cavs’ mistake for too long, even as they recklessly used what would be their second of three No. 1 picks in a four-year span; LeBron James (another Cavs No. 1 overall pick) decided to come home and save the franchise, and after combining Kyrie Irving (another Cavs No. 1 overall pick) with Kevin Love (who was traded for — get this! — two Cavs No. 1 overall picks), Cleveland had its new Big 3.

The Cavaliers would win the title in 2016, just three years after taking Bennett. The truth was they got bailed out by winning the lottery two years in a row in 2013 and 2014 despite whiffing on both selections, but the main bullet points showed the Cavs turned three No. 1 overall picks into a championship just five years after taking Kyrie Irving in the top spot. The semantics behind that road to glory didn’t matter as much for them.

But it mattered for Bennett, who was drafted into one of the most dysfunctional situations in the NBA for a year; who was jettisoned to a youth movement up north with two more promising prospects in Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins; whose issues with effort and conditioning were compounded by his shoulder problems and struggles with sleep apnea.

Bennett lacked the handles, core muscles and any sort of defensive awareness to make it in the NBA. He was a tweener without the speed to play the 3 or the strength and size to play the 4. But for most draft busts, there’s usually a team left holding the bag that deserves to shoulder its share of the blame for taking that player in the first place.

And make no mistake about it — the Cleveland Cavaliers are the rare case where the team might deserve more of the blame than the draft bust himself. After all, Anthony Bennett was pegged for the 5-10 draft range by most experts. He was never supposed to go No. 1.

There’s a reason it was immediately considered a reach, even in a draft where the pecking order of the top 10 felt wide open. There’s a reason the Cavs wound up being in the lottery once again the following year. There’s a reason Bill Simmons cut off commissioner David Stern’s announcement of Bennett as the No. 1 pick during ESPN‘s live draft coverage with that infamous “Whoa!”.

The reason? Sometimes teams become enamored with a prospect, despite what everyone else and even conventional knowledge itself says, and they go for it.

The Cavs shot their shot, despite the general consensus being that Anthony Bennett should never go No. 1 overall. Sometimes, a team defying convention by taking “their guy” ahead of schedule works out, like with Reggie Miller, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Sometimes, it happens in the second round when teams get “lucky” by nabbing future cornerstones that no one saw coming, like with Draymond Green and Nikola Jokic.

And sometimes, it totally backfires, like with Anthony Bennett. He wasn’t ready or deserving of being drafted that high, but the Cavs were the only ones dumb enough not to see it.

Maybe his size limitations, conditioning, lack of effort, non-existent jump shot and a number of personal issues would’ve ultimately doomed him to a life in draft bust territory no matter where he was taken or which team selected him. But Anthony Bennett wasn’t the one who overdrafted himself, in the most important position in the draft, and was somehow exonerated when another No. 1 overall pick came home.

So if you’re looking for the real culprits behind his status as the biggest draft bust in NBA history, look no further than the Cleveland Cavaliers.