The Suns, if you remember, did not pick up Dragan Bender’s option for next season, making him a free agent for this upcoming offseason. The list of players who have had their options declined and still turned into something good is not very long. It might not even exist at all. So that’s not a good sign at all.
Unlike the Orlando Magic situation with Mario Hezonja where he started balling a little bit in retaliation for his team’s lack of faith in him (balling which didn’t extend into this year but oh well), Bender has responded by doing even less than he did before. Which wasn’t much to start with. Most of the blame falls on the Suns for literally not playing him at all for huge chunks of the season, but now that he knows that he has no future in Phoenix, shouldn’t he go out there and chuck as much as he can when he does get to play?
There is some good news to be found. His three-point shooting, which was the one thing he could do at a decent level last year, is gone now. But in its place is elite efficiency inside the arc. He’s at 72 percent on a 2-point shots, which is DeAndre Jordan-esque. You can talk to me about small sample sizes all you want, but it won’t make a difference, because 53 (the number of those he has attempted) sounds like a god-damn big number to me.
I doubt this is it for his NBA career. There will be some team who will see the brief flashes that he sometimes emits from his 7-1 frame and think “well, he was the 4th overall pick for a reason” and try to salvage some usefulness from his largely useless body. Honestly, I wouldn’t be mad if the Bucks picked him up. There’s no way he can be worse than Thon Maker, right? Right.