The following is an excerpt from Jason Lloyd’s book The Blueprint: LeBron James, Cleveland’s Deliverance and the Making of the Modern NBA, which goes on sale today nationwide ($28, Dutton/Penguin Random House)
The pressure on (Chris) Grant was immense. He knew (Dan) Gilbert was expecting a winning team and the playoffs after three years of losing, and winning the top overall pick again only increased those expectations. But the front office knew it was debatable how much they were going to get out of the number one pick. Choosing between so many flawed prospects was keeping him up at night. He had to get this right. And much like with (Derrick) Williams two years earlier, Grant did not like (Anthony) Bennett. He wouldn’t listen to any debate about (Kyrie) Irving or Williams. He made up his mind early on he was taking Irving. This time, however, there was no other clear-cut contender. Grant was high on (Ben) McLemore, but everyone knew he wasn’t in Irving’s league in terms of talent and ability. So when the Cavs front office sat down before the draft to cast their vote on who to take, the final tally was 9-1 in favor of Bennett. The one vote against taking him? Chris Grant.
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I talked to Grant on his way into the office the morning of the draft. He wouldn’t tell me who they were taking because he insisted he didn’t know yet. He said it was down to two, but he wouldn’t divulge which two because he hadn’t spoken to their agents. Ultimately, Grant bowed to the rest of the staff. The talk leading up to the draft was that Bennett could tumble out of the top ten. Instead he was the stunning choice at number one.
(Victor) Oladipo, Gilbert’s favorite, went second to the Magic. (Nerlens) Noel slid to the Sixers at number six, while McLemore went to Sacramento with the following pick. Grant wasn’t giving up on McLemore. He was close to a deal with the Kings for the seventh pick and thought he had something done, but the Kings backed out when McLemore fell to them. They took him for themselves instead. Much like when they drafted Irving, the Cavs didn’t even tell Bennett or his agent he was going number one. The pick stunned the rest of the league, including Bennett. “I’m just as surprised as everybody else,” Bennett said.
I spoke to one team after the draft who said that at one point in their draft prep, they took Bennett’s name completely off their board. Grant, meanwhile, hardly gushed over Bennett when he met with the media after the draft.
“As we did our evaluations throughout the entire year, we just kept coming back to his ability and his talent and how it fit with our guys,” Grant said of Bennett. “A lot of times, like [2012 and Anthony Davis], it’s just clear- cut. But for us, through the year, we always had him very high in our rankings and as we went back and reviewed the film and went on campus and visited everybody, we came away saying he’s a great kid. He’s willing to work and do the right things and he’s got a bunch of talent.”
Notice how the phrase franchise player was never used. There were never any comparisons to other All-Star-caliber players, which is customary with this sort of pick. Brown was high on Bennett because UNLV was recruiting his son Elijah. Brown watched the Rebels play on several occasions and walked away impressed, believing Bennett could evolve into a small forward in the NBA. The pick, however, was a disaster.
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Bennett purchased a home in Independence, not far from the Cavs’ facility so he would be close. But it didn’t take long for team officials to begin questioning his work ethic, and it soon became clear Bennett couldn’t play either forward position. He started out as a rookie behind Tristan Thompson, Anderson Varejao, and free agent pickup Andrew Bynum. He never passed any of them. He showed up to his first training camp overweight by at least fifteen pounds and out of shape. When he appeared in the team’s intrasquad scrimmage on the campus of Baldwin Wallace University in early October, Bennett was gassed after only a couple of trips up and down the floor. The questions about his conditioning started early and never really went away.
He fell behind and never caught up. His best performance in a Cavs uniform was his second preseason game at Orlando when he showed off nifty post moves, a step-back jumper, and three-point range. He scored sixteen points, including fourteen in the fourth quarter.
Then the regular season started and Bennett missed the first sixteen shots of his career. He didn’t score his first basket until the Cavs’ fifth game. His only points prior to that were two from the free- throw line. He was booed by home fans within the first month and he ended his rookie year with meager averages of 4.2 points and three rebounds. He did not start any games and never even got off the bench in nearly half of them. Brown tried everything to get him acclimated. He tried him at small forward and power forward. He tried playing him during garbage time. He tried giving him a few days to clear his head. It didn’t matter. What the Cavs steadfastly refused to do was send him to the Development League. He clearly needed to play and wasn’t getting enough minutes, but the team feared sending him to the D‑League would damage his already- fragile psyche. It was a wasted pick.
“The issue with Anthony was, and we had no way of knowing it at the time, the kid had no desire to overcome adversity whatsoever. As soon as it was hard, he was out,” (David) Griffin said. “His whole life, he rolled out of bed bigger, better, and more talented than everybody else. As soon as it was hard, it was over. And I was the one on campus at UNLV. I’m the one who got sold the bill of goods and I bought it hook, line, and sinker. You fuck up sometimes. But I feel bad Chris took it for that, because Chris was the one guy who wasn’t sure.”
Bennett played for four teams in four years. He began the 2016–17 season with the pitiful Brooklyn Nets and still couldn’t get on the floor. Bennett was waived the following January after appearing in only twenty- three games and averaging five points. Unable to find another NBA job, he ended the season playing in Turkey. He will go down as the worst number one overall pick in draft history, yet his failures in Cleveland were just a small microcosm of what went wrong during the all- important 2013–14 season. That draft was the kickoff to a summer and season of discontent. The Blueprint was suddenly in doubt.
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