Asked what had changed in his game, new Toronto Raptor Anthony Bennett said, "Last year, it was just kind of a setback for me, but I'm just trying to put that in the past … I'm trying to have fun."
Bennett said that in 2014, during Summer League in Las Vegas. He was coming off one of the most roundly panned rookie seasons in NBA history. At the time, he was still a Cleveland Cavalier.
Everybody, including Bennett, seemed excited about a second chance. Until Cleveland packed him as a makeweight in a trade to Minnesota.
Minnesota was excited, too. Bennett said some nice things about new opportunities and being healthy for a change. Once he got out on the court, he was just as bad. Minnesota cut him a week ago, an unheard of ending for a No. 1 overall pick still on his rookie deal. Bennett agreed to give back $2-million (U.S.) in salary in order to escape. Clearly, both sides were desperate to be rid of each other.
Now he's home. Bennett grew up just west of the city. His breakthrough in the draft felt like the first bugling of Canada's emergence as a serious basketball country. He's got sentimental pull.
The city's excited. His teammates said they were excited.
Bennett? He doesn't seem very excited any more. He's only 22 years old, and all the excitement has been beaten out of him.
More than any other, the NBA is a swagger league. Players of significance carry themselves with full confidence of their place in that world, on and off the court. If you spend enough time in their company, you begin to notice all the subtle gestures that separate the guys who know they matter and the ones who know they never will.
On Monday, the Raptors presented the team in a school-gym setting. There were different stations for different media – a TV and print scrum, portrait set-ups, various radio and TV shows.
The chum of the roster came creeping in in a nervous group, hanging on to one another, trying to look as if they belonged. The settled returnees sidled in one by one, looking bored and/or amused by all the bother.
The shiniest new arrival, DeMarre Carroll, strolled in as if he was entering his own living room, a little surprised to see so many unexpected guests. Until the Raptors backed the free-agent money-truck up to his house, Carroll was a journeyman. Now he's a star. You can see the change.
"I'm a very unique individual," Carroll said. "I've been through a lot. I just want to share my story with a lot of people and let them see how I live day to day. I'm an average joe. Just like you, holding this …"
Carroll stared for a while at the "…" he was talking about. He couldn't locate the words "digital recorder." Because he never has and never will have to hold one. That's sort of the point.
For Bennett, this should be an upbeat time. He's home with family. Expectations are low. At best, he slots in fifth on the forward depth chart.
He's a useful, possibly even intriguing, piece on a league minimum salary ($950,000). There's no downside to this move for either party.
He said all the same things he'd said before – healthiest he's been since college, no pressure, looking forward to having fun.
"I feel like it's the perfect situation for me," Bennett said. "Just being comfortable."
But, man, he didn't look it. While he talked, Bennett tugged nervously on his right arm. His leg was jittering. He didn't smile until someone mentioned his experience on the Canadian team this summer – the only successful stretch of basketball he's had in the past two years (and it wasn't all that successful).
Bennett should be used to this routine by now. The questions were gentle lobs from sympathetic homers. Yet he carried himself like a guy who's just gotten swarmed coming out of a massage parlour.
If he had a choice in the matter, would he do it again? Would he want to be picked first?
"Honestly, yeah. Why not?"
I can think of a bunch of reasons. I'm pretty sure Bennett can, too.
There have been so many knocks on him, it's hard to tell which side is the dented one. After going first overall, he showed up to his first professional camp overweight and injured. He suddenly had asthma and sleep apnea. He's big, but the wrong sort of big – too slow to play the three, too short to fill the power slot.
He didn't work hard enough. He drifted out of games. All the tall foreheads agreed that Bennett is a 'tweener. At everything.
Everyone who's ever gotten rid of him says a lot of nice things as he leaves, none of which amounts to actual praise.
"He has a lot of talent," was the closest Minnesota general manager Milt Newton would get to commenting on Bennett's game. That's true of every single player at this level, and so means nothing.
The bottom line: If he was good enough, Bennett wouldn't be saying goodbye so often.
He'll get a decent chance in Toronto, but not a great one. This team is beyond the developmental stage. Everything it does is building toward a singular goal – winning a playoff round. That's the only definition of success this year.
It's been rejigged to create what management hopes is a positive sort of friction – between Kyle Lowry and newcomer Cory Joseph at the point-guard spot, between the tough-minded brand of basketball played by Carroll and Bismack Biyombo and all the soft touches who remain from last year's postseason surrender.
The new Toronto Raptors are a house divided, just hopefully not against itself. But prepare for "against itself."
Bennett will have to find his own way in the midst of all that tumult. A lot of people will be pulling for him. He seems like a decent young man, and it'd be a great story.
But just based off a snap impression on Day 1, you wonder if the disappointments and rough treatment of the past two years have already broken Bennett. And if anyone can put him back together again.
Cathal Kelly