Minnesota Sports Forum

Cam - the Young vs Bennett is an apples and oranges thing. Young would be acquired to be our starting PF, which many of us are not completely comfortable with. Bennett would be acquired as an asset with potential, but we would be looking for our starting PF elsewhere.

Would the 76ers have interest in Shabazz for Young?
Who has more upside? Bennett or Shabazz?

Wiggy/Benny/future 1st

Some on here made a comp on Bennett to Larry Johnson. Larry's career was pretty disappointing (checked out his stats). His best years were his first 2. After that he never averaged more than 6 boards a game.

Let's hope Bennett doesn't become the last UNLV player drafter 1st overall.

LloydBraun wrote:Wiggy/Benny/future 1st

Some on here made a comp on Bennett to Larry Johnson. Larry's career was pretty disappointing (checked out his stats). His best years were his first 2. After that he never averaged more than 6 boards a game.

Let's hope Bennett doesn't become the last UNLV player drafter 1st overall.

Stats don't tell the whole story on LJ. He played a lot of SF and what hurt his career was injuries and that's why it didn't turn out. If he would have been able to remain healthy he was a pretty good player. Any team would be lucky to have Bennett become a healthy Larry Jonhson. Of course the bad news is Bennett already has had injury issues. LJ was serious back problems (he had other injuries too) that forced him to retire if I remember correctly.

monsterpile wrote:

LloydBraun wrote:Wiggy/Benny/future 1st

Some on here made a comp on Bennett to Larry Johnson. Larry's career was pretty disappointing (checked out his stats). His best years were his first 2. After that he never averaged more than 6 boards a game.

Let's hope Bennett doesn't become the last UNLV player drafter 1st overall.

Stats don't tell the whole story on LJ. He played a lot of SF and what hurt his career was injuries and that's why it didn't turn out. If he would have been able to remain healthy he was a pretty good player. Any team would be lucky to have Bennett become a healthy Larry Jonhson. Of course the bad news is Bennett already has had injury issues. LJ was serious back problems (he had other injuries too) that forced him to retire if I remember correctly.

Actually he didn't miss that many games aside from one year of only 54 games. And yet was somehow able to get 11.9 million per year from the Knicks in 1999, the year before he was waived. I know the contract was probably back-loaded but still very impressive!

LloydBraun wrote:

monsterpile wrote:

LloydBraun wrote:Wiggy/Benny/future 1st

Some on here made a comp on Bennett to Larry Johnson. Larry's career was pretty disappointing (checked out his stats). His best years were his first 2. After that he never averaged more than 6 boards a game.

Let's hope Bennett doesn't become the last UNLV player drafter 1st overall.

Stats don't tell the whole story on LJ. He played a lot of SF and what hurt his career was injuries and that's why it didn't turn out. If he would have been able to remain healthy he was a pretty good player. Any team would be lucky to have Bennett become a healthy Larry Jonhson. Of course the bad news is Bennett already has had injury issues. LJ was serious back problems (he had other injuries too) that forced him to retire if I remember correctly.

Actually he didn't miss that many games aside from one year of only 54 games. And yet was somehow able to get 11.9 million per year from the Knicks in 1999, the year before he was waived. I know the contract was probably back-loaded but still very impressive!

Well it was the Knicks... Lol He played a lot of games but it was obvious he wasn't actually healthy.

I find it curious that no one thinks Tristan Thompson will be included. He seems the obvious choice to move for several reasons (some of which Lip has outlined previously):
1) While he would serve as a great big off bench, he is severely limited from a PT perspective with Love in Cleveland.
2) Agent would certainly prefer he move to team where he gets starter minutes to prepare for a contract extension next offseason
3) If Cleveland believes in Bennett's skill, he may be the better guy for them to keep longer term as he could take minutes at the 3 and 4, which would seemingly be of value to Cleveland. He is also cost controlled for much longer, which is important as they will have 3 max contracts on their roster.

I actually think I prefer TT in MN as opposed to the talked about Young (whom I also like) simply because he is the better defender and rebounder, which we need next to Pek. If Dieng becomes the starter, then maybe Young is the better fit.

Deal I would prefer if I had choice:
MN gets Wiggins / Waiters / Thompson / non-guarenteed contracts from Cle
Cle gets: Love / Brewer / Varnado
Phili gets: Barea / Moute / Mem 1st or Mia 1st or Cle 1st (whichever is best) / MN 2nd

I know Phili wants Waiters, but I still think they do they deal above without. They are currently sitting at about $35M in contracts after their 2 1st round picks are signed. They need to get to $56M to support the min salary cap. Barea and Moute are $10M of expiring contracts. Seems they will almost have to do a deal liek this to get closer to cap, as I don't see anyone signing a large offer sheet with them for another year or 2. They also keep Young to make another deal. He will certainly return assets either with another team now or before the trade deadline. They continue to acquire assets for nothing.

bleedspeed177 wrote:Would the 76ers have interest in Shabazz for Young?
Who has more upside? Bennett or Shabazz?

I can't answer the first question, bleed, but the second one is easy for me. Shabazz is a great volume scorer, but limited in other aspects of the game. Bennett has much more upside.

50% from the floor for Young's career, and while on a poor team where he was asked to do a lot by himself, he still put up 18 PPG on 45% shooting last year. Always been decent (hovers around 70%) at the FT line even though he doesn't get there as much as I'd like. Would love to hear how he isn't efficient.

Young does a fine job guarding the post. At times he can be out-muscled, but he does everything else well. He's even molded himself into a pretty good help defender. Keep in mind there's more to defense than guarding a post opportunity. If that's all defense was, Kevin Love would be looked at in a whole different way.

How many excuses can we give Bennett for last year? I watched his games. Having a shoulder injury, breathing problems, Mike Brown as a coach, etc. I've heard all of the reasons why he was awful. For some reason, I haven't heard "maybe he's just not that good" on this board. The excuses given for him do NOT make him any less of a black hole on offense. They don't make him a better defender, both individual and as part of a team unit. It doesn't make his jumper any more reliable. It doesn't change his mentality from SF to PF, which he needs to do if he's to ever going to find success in the NBA.

For those of you that were blown away by what Bennett did in Summer League, he scored 13.3 PPG on under 43% shooting in about 30 MPG. That's what kind of efficiency you get when you live off your jumper, and it's not all that great. Granted, he did grab 7.8 rebounds per contest.

Could I be wrong, and Bennett's an All-Star in the waiting? Man, I really doubt it. But I would like to see more people pick apart his game for what it is instead of assume that these excuses tell the whole story.

Bennett seems substantially undervalued by many as part of this deal. I understand why his value would get lost in the focus on Wiggins, but Bennett is a tremendous talent.

Yes, he had a bad rookie season, but that's not totally unusual for rookie with only one year of college. Moreover, consider the following: (1) he was coming off shoulder surgery, which limited his ability to prepare for the season; (2) he had major sleep apnea caused by breathing issues that were surgically corrected after last season; and (3) he was playing for a bad team that was horribly coached.

Then, look back at Bennett's college stats. You will see that his numbers were, overall, actually better than Wiggins' stats. In nearly 6 fewer minutes per game, Bennett averaged:

- 16 points per game compared to Wiggins' 17,
- 8 rebounds compared to Wiggins 6,
- 1.2 blocks compared to Wiggins 1.0,
- 0.7 steals compared to Wiggins 1.2,
- 53.3% FG shooting compared to Wiggins 44.8%, and
- 37.5% 3-point shooting compared to Wiggins' 34.1%

On a 40 minute per game basis, Bennett had more PPG, RPG, and BPG than Wiggins to go with substantially better shooting percentages from the field and behind the arc. Bennett's 23.7 PPG and 1.8 blocks on a 40-minute basis are effectively identical to Love's 23.6 PPG and 1.9 blocks as a college frosh. Bennett's 23.7 PPG and 12.0 rebounds on a 40-minute basis are comparable to Melo's 24.4 PPG and 11.0 boards.

Then, look at highlight footage of Wiggins and Bennett from college. You can see Wiggins' tremendous athleticism, great body control and fluid shot. But you will see that Bennett is much stronger and a better ball-handler than Wiggins. Bennett also has a nice cross-over while Wiggins doesn't seem to have one at all.

Does this mean Bennett is a better prospect than Wiggins? No. I'll defer to the experts on this and ackowledge that Wiggins is the better overall talent and, therefore, the better prospect. But the numbers and a close look at his skill set exhibited on the court tell us that Bennett should be viewed as far more than a throw-in or afterthought.

Bennett will be part of this deal. He'll be coming to Minnesota along with Wiggins and possibly some other minor pieces or a vet like Thad Young. If this deal works out as I believe Flip thinks it can, the Wolves will have hit two home runs by acquiring two young players with huge upside who can become the League's premier young duo at that PF and SF positions.