Minnesota Sports Forum

longstrangetrip wrote:

PorkChop wrote:I bet Cams just rolling in his message board grave.

LOL. Nah, he'd just be talking about the level of competition in the Pan Ams. Actually monster nailed it yesterday...the players aren't as good as those in the SL, but the play is much better because the teams had more time to practice together.

AB only played 15 minutes because of foul problems in their win tonight over Argentina, but he still went 17 and 6 and didn't miss a shot. I hope someone else can weigh in with their thoughts about how he looks, because he looks much leaner and quicker to me. He looks very long out there.

LST I will say I lurked a little on Rubechat and Realgm wolves boards and a couple posters said during the game AB looked leaner also. He looks that way even on that vine video of his dunk but thats not quite enough to say one way or another. lol I will say this though those sleeved wolves jerseys make Bennett look maybe even more wide in the shoulders than he is and he is wide and in a good way.

2 more than respectable performances for AB now that's good I don't care what the competition is to a certain extent. I want the guy to succeed. II would love to just see him set screens and roll to the basket. Really I just want him to do well enough in this international play that someone has to ask Flip what he thinks. =)

Edit: Here is a 30 second clip which has that Bennett dunk in it with some of the game flow before it.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=13300122

AB seems to have all the potential in the world. It is just mental for him. Not a bad guy, but he just seems to be a step slow in processing things on the court. I like him more then Payne, but think he time year will be up soon. I hope he puts it together.

I watched the last couple minutes of the last game. AB played good. He had a big shot around 2 minutes to go (a step back mid range jumper). I'm pulling for the guy just as much as anyone. However.....

IMO, to restore faith, he has to do more than play good. He should friggin' dominate! I mean...guys like Brady Heslip and Bobby Brown look good in these games and have been some of the better players (based on stats). Right now AB is averaging 16 pts/8 rebs which is good. But it's not even best on his team (Andrew Nicholson is averaging 19/8.5). Damien Wilkins (former Wolf) is averaging 18/7 for USA to further put things in perspective (I think he's been out of the NBA for a while). Again - all good numbers. I'm just saying I'm hoping AB can blow us away by showing he can dominate guys that he probably should be dominating if he's going to ever live up to his #1 status.

Yeah, if AB wants to really impress he needs to dominate. My definition of domination for AB would be scoring 22+ points on 50% plus shooting, 12+ rebounds, 3+ assists and more than a steal and block a game. Otherwise his current stats don't really move the needle on whether he stays.

Hey! Don't rain on LST's parade...

TeamRicky wrote:Yeah, if AB wants to really impress he needs to dominate. My definition of domination for AB would be scoring 22+ points on 50% plus shooting, 12+ rebounds, 3+ assists and more than a steal and block a game. Otherwise his current stats don't really move the needle on whether he stays.

I am more looking at what he is or isn't doing as what it does for his career no matter where he ends up. Wilkins is a guy I think could easily be in the NBA as a 14th 15th man but he is generally to old there are younger guys people give the shot too from the d-league. He is another guy that if he could shoot the 3 at a decent rate he would have a place in the league. Bennett needs to have some sort of success to get him on track. I hope he is showing more to his game than what he showed last year in SL it just was alright.

Based on the posts here, he is averaging 16 and 8 in 22 MPG's which extrapolates to 22 and 11 in 36 MPG's. If he doesn't get the minutes how is he supposed to put up dominating numbers? This is more of a team environment and teams don't just showcase one or two guys. From the sounds of it he is playing efficiently and putting up decent stats for the minutes he is getting. If he's doing this all within their team concept, that's exactly what we need from him moving forward. We don't need a Bennett that scores 30 as the premier guy in the Pan Am games. We need a Bennett that learns how to get an efficient 16 and 8 off the bench within the team framework. We don't need a star in Bennett. We need a rotation player. 16 and 8 efficiently is a rotation player.

Why do those who defend AB just quote his points and rebounds? There are so many more aspects to a player's game than those stats and AB is really poor on the other stats. So if a player sucks at defense, passing and dribbling, he isn't all that valuable in my opinion unless he's super efficient as a scorer. But when you look at AB in 109 NBA games, he's terribly inefficient as a scorer. I still hope AB plays well so that some team trades something of value for him, but I can't ever see AB as a rotational player on a championship caliber team.

TeamRicky wrote:Why do those who defend AB just quote his points and rebounds? There are so many more aspects to a player's game than those stats and AB is really poor on the other stats. So if a player sucks at defense, passing and dribbling, he isn't all that valuable in my opinion unless he's super efficient as a scorer. But when you look at AB in 109 NBA games, he's terribly inefficient as a scorer. I still hope AB plays well so that some team trades something of value for him, but I can't ever see AB as a rotational player on a championship caliber team.

Only 10 PF's in the entire league averaged 2 or more APG's. PF's are typically not ball handling creators so why the hell should we be critical of that part of his game if Blake Griffin is the only 4 in the league who fits that description. So that leaves defense, scoring and rebounding and defense takes the longest time to learn in the NBA and it's not like our coaching staff is doing anybody any favors by coaching guys up on that end. Everyone was bad on defense last year with the exception of Wiggins who was just ok. Your expectations are ridiculous. You basically want a 5 tool guy out of a PF when there isn't a single one of those in the league (AD is close, but he's still half the playmaker/ball handler Griffin is). Traditionally you get 2 out of 3 of scoring, rebounding and defense from bench bigs in the league and AB does two of those things.

Well the upside to AB making the team this year and not playing much is we resign him next year as a cheap backup pf??