Retro Scouting Report: Anthony Bennett
The 1st pick in 2013 failed to live up to the hype
“Those who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”
This summer, we started a small series called Retro Scouting Reports. The idea was simple: look back at some fascinating prospects of the last several years to get a feel for what they looked like at the time of the draft. It’s an exercise rooted in the desire to learn from past mistakes or triumphs of the scouting process. Maybe, just maybe, that by looking back at what happened in the past we can learn something for the future.
The quote above is on the top of the U.S. History syllabus I hand out to my students. It’s an important reminder of why we look back and study what happened before us. Embedded within that statement is an inherent desire to improve, to be better than we were in the past. Chasing greatness as a scout and talent evaluator means being brutally honest with your prior misfires and willing to study them once again.
Anthony Bennett was the ideal candidate for our first installment in this series. His highlights were appealing, energetic and dominant in stretches. Looking at the film now, it isn’t a surprise he went first overall.
The game has changed a lot since 2013. Digging into the past makes it difficult to know whether the evolution of play style could have been predicted at the time, or if holding Bennett’s failures to change with the times against myself is unwarranted punishment. Retrospect is always 20/20 and now that we know the game has moved away from strong-bodied post-up 4-men makes it hard to transport ourselves back to that time so we can recall the indicators that were around.
A major lesson from Bennett is to look forward and try to anticipate those changes, at least when dealing with a franchise-altering selection in the top of the lottery. Similar issues plagued Jahlil Okafor in subsequent years. All could have been avoided by placing two questions at the front of our analysis:
Where is the NBA game trending over the next 5-8 years?
How does that change impact the role and utility of this prospect?
So how would we use this looking forward at the next 5-8 years? I think size and 3-point shooting will continue to grow. We’ll see more 6’10” or taller players with guard skills and lethal 3-point shots. I think the 3 thru 5 positions will become more interchangeable on some dangerous teams who feature a collection of those players. That will be a fantastic counter to those wings like LeBron James or Kawhi Leonard who love to mismatch post guys at their position or smaller. Negating it with length, while not sacrificing spacing on the offensive end, changes how the game is played.
We might be a few years away from that trend taking place, but we’re starting to see the inklings of franchises chasing that model. The Orlando Magic went super long and supersized a couple years ago through the draft. Their vision failed, mainly due to talent not reaching their potential. Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti is assembling a lot of length, with unique and unorthodox skillsets like Aleksei Pokusevski, Josh Giddey and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Staying one step ahead means not just accurately predicting what’s next but avoiding building a franchise around players who could get left behind by such a change. Anthony Bennett had other flaws that played him out of the league. But as I went back and watched his college tape this summer, the glaring point that stood out was how clear it was that a modern, faster-paced game would render him obsolete.
We should have seen it coming.