Ex-Rebel Bennett struggling to hit stride as NBA rookie

LOS ANGELES — It was more than two hours before tipoff and Anthony Bennett was working up quite a sweat.

The 20-year-old rookie forward of the Cleveland Cavaliers was going through his tutorial on how to be an NBA player. Shooting drills. Footwork drills. Bennett toiled in the virtually empty Staples Center as the assistant coaches encouraged him. Jab step. Pump fake. Catch and shoot. Hard dribble into the lane. Finish. Finish.

Bennett did drill after drill. He smiled when a move worked or he drained a jump shot. He grimaced when he missed. Little did he realize that would be the extent of his activity on Tuesday. The Cavaliers and Lakers, two below-average teams, slugged it out with Bennett resigned to spectator status on the bench, approximately 10 feet from Jack Nicholson. On this night, the Cavaliers would pull out a 120-118 win. Bennett’s stat line? DNP-CD, which means “Did Not Play — Coach’s Decision.”

It would be more of the same the net night in Portland as the Cavs lost to the Trail Blazers, 108-96. Bennett never got off the bench. It was his fifth DNP-CD. He also missed two games last month due to illness.

Welcome to the league, kid.

For Bennett, the 6-foot-8-inch, 259-pound forward from Brampton, Ontario, who decided to leave UNLV after his freshman season and was ultimately taken No. 1 overall last June, these past seven months have been trying, to say the least.

Anthony had shoulder surgery prior to the draft, missed all summer and an opportunity to develop, took five games to make his first NBA basket, then saw his minutes shrink as coach Mike Brown decided to go with his veterans, including the recently acquired Luol Deng.

“It’s been tough, but I have to be patient,” Bennett said of his situation, which has seen him average just 10.3 minutes in 31 games and 2.4 points and 2.2 rebounds while making $5,324,280 in the first year of his four-year deal. “I feel like I’m making progress. It doesn’t show much in the games, but in practice, I’m going hard. My conditioning’s better. I’ve lost weight, so it’s coming along slowly.

“It’s a learning process. I missed the whole summer because of the surgery, so I’m kinda behind and I’m trying to catch up on everything. All I can do is keep working hard.”

It seems like a virtually impossible task, and it has understandably drawn the ire of Cavaliers fans, who probably want general manager Chris Grant drug tested for selecting Bennett with the first pick.

Yes, the Cavaliers saw the holes in Bennett’s game. Yes, they are aware Bennett suffers from asthma, and that despite working with doctors, there’s the reality he’s going to have to deal with that condition as long as he’s in the league.

But they also see the flashes of brilliance Bennett displayed at Findlay Prep and at UNLV, and they believe they did not draft a modern version of LaRue Martin, who was a bust-out after being taken No. 1 overall by Portland in 1972.

“We see it in practice,” coach Mike Brown said. “We believe (Bennett) will be a very good player for us.”

Brown speaks in the future tense. In the present, the Cavs have turned to a familiar face to UNLV fans — Tim Grgurich — to help accelerate Bennett’s learning curve. Grgurich, who helped craft Gary Payton’s career that would eventually lead him to the Hall of Fame and who has helped dozens of others in his two decades as an assistant coach in the NBA, is not just assisting Bennett. He’s working with all of Cleveland’s young players.

“He’s taught me a whole lot,” Bennett said of Grgurich, who deferred to Brown when asked about working with Bennett. “He’s showing me places on the floor where I can get the ball, places where I can get open, where to be defensively. He’s been a real good mentor to me.”

Bennett said Grgurich has given him one other valuable piece of advice for making it in the NBA.

“He tells me to go hard all the time and don’t take any plays off,” he said.

But there’s no substitute for actual game experience, and right now Bennett is on the outside looking in. The Cavaliers are reluctant to reassign Bennett to their Development League team in Canton, Ohio, perhaps due to the perceived public backlash. (No overall No. 1 pick has played in the D-League.)

Brown rationalized the idea of not sending Bennett to Canton by saying: “We’ve been able to find minutes for A.B. from time to time, whether it’s at the small forward or power forward. So we don’t think the D-League is an option at this point.”

But Bennett said he’d be willing to accept a reassignment to the D-League.

“It’s something to think about, for sure,” he said. “It’s not a bad thing going down there. Hopefully I’d get to play a lot and build my confidence.”

Perhaps the Cavaliers believe working with Grgurich is the antidote for sending Bennett to the D-League. But if the cliche “work in progress” was ever correctly applied, it is with Bennett. His improvement isn’t necessarily measured by points, rebounds and minutes, but by body language, emotions and attitude. The fact he’s willing to go to the D-League indicates he’s not selfish and he’s not thinking of himself as the No. 1 overall pick. Rather, he sees himself as a young player trying to learn how to compete with veterans.

His agent, Mike George, said if the Cavs’ fans will be patient with Bennett, they’ll ultimately be rewarded.

“It’s amazing that people are calling him a bust after 30-some games when he’s playing less than 10 minutes a night,” George said. “I think a lot of it is media-driven, but Anthony understands the situation. He’s 20 years old. He hadn’t played a real game since March. He missed the entire predraft workout stuff, missed all of the summer league, and he is still trying to get into playing shape.

“Sure, he’s frustrated. It’s not going to happen overnight where he’s suddenly a great player. But I try to tell him to look at the big picture, think long term, and I think he understands that.

“We’re trying to keep things positive. We trust the organization will do the right thing for his career.”

Fellow Canadian Tristan Thompson, Bennett’s teammate in Cleveland, said the same thing.

“Every player goes through tough stretches in this league,” said Thompson, who, like Bennett, is an alumnus of Findlay Prep. “He just has to keep fighting through it. But we all have his back, and he’ll be fine. He understands the process — it’s a marathon, not a sprint — and he’s going to get better.

“Years from now, when he’s a great player in this league, he’ll be able to look back on this year and laugh about it.”

Right now, Bennett isn’t laughing. Smiling, yes, though at the same time, he’s trying to come to grips with his situation. But he’s here and can’t change the past. And despite his early struggles in the NBA, he believes he did the right thing by not returning to UNLV for his sophomore season.

“I was the No. 1 pick,” he said. “How does it get better than that?”

Contact reporter Steve Carp at 702-387-2913 or scarp@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @stevecarprj.