Built to Lose - Deleted Scenes - VII
Welcome, folks. My name is Jake Fischer. I’m a former Sports Illustrated NBA reporter and current Bleacher Report contributor. If you’re here, you probably know my first book, ‘Built to Lose: How the NBA’s Tanking Era Changed the League Forever’, will be out May 4. It covers Hinkie’s Sixers, the post-Big Three Celtics, old Kobe’s Lakers, some crazy Kings drama, plus so much more. And if you subscribe to this newsletter, you’ll receive a 30% off discount code for pre-ordering a copy.
Today’s is the final edition of this newsletter, where over the past few months, I’ve shared a good bit of new information learned while reporting this book that didn’t fit between its two covers. If you’ve followed along the way, it’s been greatly appreciated. And if you’re new here, you can find the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth installments at their appropriate links.
Next Tuesday is finally the day. I’m so excited for people to see and read the anecdotes that do comprise the book’s 320 pages. Thanks to everyone who’s supported thus far. I hope these final three stories continue to whet your appetite.
I.
Forget about outlasting Miami and LeBron James, the Indiana Pacers thought they were going to win the 2014 NBA championship. You would too, if you made a series of roster upgrades over the offseason, then started the year 9-0, lost once, and proceeded to rattle off another seven-straight to begin an imposing 16-1.
Indiana, after all, had come within a whisper of the 2013 Finals, falling only to James and the Heat in Game 7 for the Eastern Conference crown. And after team president Donnie Walsh stepped down from his post, it was the legendary Larry Bird who then resumed the top perch of Indy’s front office. Bird believed it was only depth that stood between his hometown franchise and Miami. And so general manager Kevin Pritchard began conducting his due diligence on Phoenix Suns forward Luis Scola.
One of the greatest Argentinian players of all time, Scola had thrived in a reserve role for the Suns that previous 2012-13 campaign, posting 17.3 points, 8.9 rebounds and a career-high 3.0 assists per 36 minutes. And Phoenix, spearheaded by a first-year chief executive named Ryan McDonough, insisted the Pacers sent their young center Miles Plumlee plus a 2014 first-round draft pick for Scola. “They were trying to rebuild and acquire as many first-round picks as possible,” says then-Indiana vice president Peter Dinwiddie.
It was a lofty price to pay for a 33-year-old, but Bird wanted depth, and the Pacers felt they were that close. “We thought [Scola’s] addition could help take us to the Finals,” Dinwiddie confirms.
Indiana already boasted a not-so-secret weapon against James and Dwyane Wade. The Pacers’ head coach Frank Vogel both expertly taught his players and deftly explained to the media the concept of defensive verticality. If a man simply rises into the air with his arms straight up, the NBA rule book indicates referees should whistle that no differently than a defender beating an opponent to a spot on the court—even if that spot is airborne and at the rim.
Knicks fans surely haven’t forgotten Indiana center Roy Hibbert’s emphatic rejection of Carmelo Anthony in the 2013 playoffs. “One of the best blocks I’ve ever seen,” Dinwiddie says.
And so whenever James or Wade rumbled toward the basket, Hibbert would shuffle his massive feet into the paint, lifting his hands high. All at once, Hibbert could leap, take the brunt of James’ or Wade’s momentum and knees to his 7’2” body, quell their forward progress, and hope both players landed back on the hardwood with the ball having bounced away from the net.
“To me, it’s about getting your body in front of the ball coming to the rim,” Vogel says. “Charge taking can be one effective way to affect the rim, but the whistle’s gonna blow a lot. With the growth of the three-point line, you’re also gonna be on the floor if the whistle doesn’t blow, so it’s tougher to get back up and rotate. To me, verticality plays help us in transition, because the whistle blows less, and you can get out and run more. You’re in a position to a) rebound and b) get out to the weak side. It’s something that made sense then. It still applies to the modern NBA.”
Hibbert was such an X-factor, and Bird was so bullish on building out Indiana’s bench, the Pacers even brought in Andrew Bynum for a midseason workout. He famously hadn’t played a minute of the 2012-13 season in Philadelphia due to curious knee injuries—more of which is revealed in ‘Built to Lose’. Bynum then flamed out after 24 games with Cleveland to start 2013-14, but Indy’s medical staff green lit Bird’s latest signing. “We were just looking to acquire talent,” Dinwiddie says.
Somewhere along the way, Indiana’s hot start began to fizzle. Those supposed-to-be-rebuilding Suns actually handed the Pacers two mid-season losses, plus a blueprint on how to stop Indy. Phoenix’s smaller unit whirred around Indiana’s bigger frontcourt of Hibbert and West. “We felt like they had our number. We could do nothing with them,” says Pacers center Ian Mahinmi. “That was kind of the beginning of a trend, a little bit. Teams started to play small.”
Indiana still held onto the No. 1 seed in those 2014 Eastern Conference playoffs, but did so at just 56-26. And when they once again met Miami in the third round, just four wins shy of the Finals, the Pacers did take Game 1. Only the Heat roared back to claim three-straight. Indiana responded in Game 5, but Miami won the decisive Game 6 quite easily, 117-92.
Scola scored just 2 points over 6:58 of playing time. Sometimes, depth only matters so much against superior talent—talent worth tanking for.
II.
It was a play that made all of Haas Pavilion in Berkeley, Calif. shake, and promptly sent a quake throughout the NBA scouting world. An entry pass trickled its way to the left block, with just under six minutes remaining in the opening half between California and visiting UNLV. There Anthony Bennett swept the ball clean with one paw, spun up court, and whipped a vicious crossover past a retreating Cal defender.
Bennett bound into the open court, passed ahead to a teammate filling the lane, caught the ball back, and thundered a two-handed jam through the rim. Highlight after highlight followed. There was Bennett, bulldozing past any defender in sight, head-faking past another and flying baseline for one more powerful flush. By game’s end, Bennett finished with a dominant 25 points and 13 rebounds, and UNLV’s head coach Dave Rice walked off the floor, shaking his head, fully believing he was overseeing the best freshman in the country during that 2012-2013 season. “I was just thinking, ‘He’s going to be a top-five pick,’” Rice says.
That performance at Cal wasn’t too dissimilar from what Rice had scouted on the amateur circuit. At one July 2011 AAU tournament in Akron, Ohio, Rice was stunned by how easily Bennett overpowered his foes. “He did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to do it,” the coach recalls. “Scored from all over the floor, hit threes, caught lobs, grabbed defensive rebounds and brought it up the floor and scored. Truly a man among boys.”
Bennett was always expected to be a one-and-done player, the type of starry prospect who only spends a single season in college simply because the NBA, at the time, forbid youngsters from entering the league directly out of high school. Rice and Bennett agreed they’d discuss the NBA at greater detail once their year together concluded, but both only expected that season to turn Bennett into a mere lottery selection. “I don’t think anyone ever thought about him necessarily being the first pick in the draft,” Rice says.
The Cleveland Cavaliers would eventually make that No. 1 choice. And Cavs officials saw what was happening with their former superstar down in Miami. That LeBron James-led juggernaut that stood in the way of Larry Bird’s Pacers, they were torturing the league with an unbeatable lineup that shifted All-Star power forward Chris Bosh up to play center. All around the league, it seemed a greater emphasis was being placed on malleable players who could guard multiple positions. Even if they were a bit smaller than their matchup on the other side of the court, they would probably have a speed and shooting advantage on offense.
The NBA then went on to watch its next dynasty emerge in Oakland, where the Warriors won three championships in four years largely with lineups that did not feature a center. And before that ever unfolded, Cleveland believed Anthony Bennett was the perfect prototype for that kind of scheme. At UNLV, he billed as a more explosive, bigger, Draymond Green, before Draymond Green ever even became “Draymond Green.”
“His skill set for his size and ability to exert his will on the offensive side of the ball was a big part of it,” says one Cavaliers official. “The hybrid nature of him was so appealing. We just invested in the wrong one.”
A shoulder injury first started nagging Bennett towards the end of his freshman season. He played through the pain, with Rice speaking often with Bennett’s mother, keeping their focus on improving Bennett’s draft stock. The youngster then underwent surgery in May that limited his workout availability on the pre-draft circuit. Which, perhaps tactfully, prevented NBA evaluators from seeing Bennett up close and poking holes in his game.
While other prospects’ stocks fell, like potential No. 1 pick Ben McLemore dropping all the way to No. 7 on draft night, Bennett’s value stayed high—it might have even rose. Cleveland indeed selected the UNLV sensation with their top choice, but Bennett’s injuries never subsided. He began his career b watching training camp from the sidelines. “I think that made it tough,” says Cavaliers point guard Matthew Dellavedova.
Whether hampered by injury or struggling amid a position battle with another green Cleveland forward Tristan Thompson, Bennett never managed to find his footing over 52 games as a rookie. When the Cavaliers acquired Spencer Hawes at the trade deadline, that added yet another frontcourt body to push Bennett further down the depth chart.
“Man, I felt bad for him, because, it’s something that happens to a lot of rookies, you can’t figure out how you’re gonna make an impact or your whole role kind of changes and how your skill set has to evolve with it,” Hawes says. “It’s not an unfamiliar experience, I guess, for a majority of rookies. It’s just, when you’re the No. 1 pick, you don’t have the benefit of getting to work shit out like that.”
Bennett’s shoulders drooped while he sat all those minutes on the bench. His spirits seemed more than dampened. At UNLV, he was always one to high-five teammates on their way back to the bench. He’d conduct lengthy autograph signings at a local Boys and Girls club, grinning from ear to ear all the while. “He just had this infectious smile,” Rice says.
But that all faded in Cleveland. It wasn’t long before Bennett was hearing endless shouts labeling him a bust. “You feel for a guy that has that much pressure on him and just kind of simultaneously taking that amount of shit for things where, it wasn’t like he was playing 30 minutes a night,” Hawes says. “It’s hard for anybody to figure it out and contribute in limited time, especially when you’ve never been in that position before.”
It seems Cleveland dug a hole that Bennett was never able to claw out of. He’d last just four seasons in the NBA, playing only twice as many minutes as he did during his freshman jaunt in Las Vegas.
“We all believed in his talent,” says the Cavs official. “He just should have been the seventh or eighth pick.”
III.
Our final scene shifts once again to the college game, and moves back to the state of Indiana. Only a few miles north of Bankers Life Fieldhouse, where Roy Hibbert rejected Carmelo Anthony, Butler University’s play caller Brad Stevens was emerging as the hottest coaching name in basketball.
Stevens guided his unheralded Bulldogs all the way to the NCAA Championship game in 2010, and Butler came within a few inches of Gordon Hayward’s miracle heave slaying Duke. That drama punctuating their loss may have even made Stevens’ Bulldogs all the more of a plucky Cinderella story.
Yet Butler was no underdog. They were a sleeping giant. After losing to Alabama-Birmingham on Dec. 22, Stevens’ group would march all the way to that title match by winning 25 straight games. Butler didn’t just compete, it showed up expecting to win.
In the Sweet 16, when Syracuse used a 10-2 run to claim its first lead of the game with 13:29 to play, Stevens called for timeout and rallied his troops. Where many coaches would scream and holler, Butler’s leader remained calm and poised. “We're going to weather the storm, stay the course, and win the game," Stevens assured.
"Every other coach would have lost it," says Ron Nored, a point guard on that Butler team, and current assistant coach for the Charlotte Hornets.
Stevens kept that resolve even after Hayward’s miracle shot clanked off the iron. Back in that defeated locker room, the coach kept his players focused on the forest, not the trees. "His whole message was one game isn't going to define us,” Nored says. Sure enough, even after losing Hayward and starting guard Shelvin Mack to the NBA, Butler stormed all the way back to meet UConn for the 2011 NCAA title.
Within two years, one of Larry Bird’s former teammates would bring Stevens to the NBA, as Danny Ainge minted the coach the steward of Boston’s rebuild from their Big Three era. The news came as a surprise to many around the league, but not to those who’d seen Stevens up close and personal. Few men can take Butler to back-to-back title bouts. "It was only a matter of time before it happened in the NBA,” Nored says.
‘Built to Lose: How the NBA’s Tanking Era Changed the League Forever,” arrives on May 4.
You can subscribe to this newsletter and receive a 30% off discount code.