NBA Free Agents 2016: Rumors, Predictions on Stephen Jackson, Anthony Bennett
With the big names out of the way—Kevin Durant, Mike Conley, Dwyane Wade and so on—this is the time of year you’ll see some peculiar free-agent stories.
Comebacks. Ring chases. The pursuit of redemption.
Below, we’ll touch on all three of those themes.
The last time we saw Stephen Jackson in an NBA uniform, he played nine games for the Los Angeles Clippers in 2013-14. LAC was the 38-year-old’s fifth home since 2010.
Though Jackson never made an All-Star team, he did average 15-plus points eight out of his 14 seasons in the league. He’s a career 33.3 percent shooter from distance and hit 41.4 percent of his field-goal attempts.
After dabbling in NBA analysis, he’s coming back—at least according to The Jump co-host Rachel Nichols:
It was odd to see the Golden State Warriors supposedly offer a training camp invite in July. We’re in the heart of the NBA Summer League, so floating an offer to a near-40-year-old who hasn’t played competitively in two years certainly raised some eyebrows.
Still, it came just weeks after ESPN’s Marc Stein dropped a report that seemed to indicate mutual interest between the two parties, even if it was for different positions:
Keep in mind that was before Golden State landed Durant.
As Stein noted, Jackson won a title in 2003 with the San Antonio Spurs. He’s not in desperate need of a ring (cough David West cough), but the best years of his career came with the “We Believe” Warriors in the mid-2000s. He stated in February that those Dubs could beat the 73-win ones from this past season.
Following Nichols' tweets, Jackson posted a throwback picture of those Golden State days:
He captioned it: “Yep. It’s on again.” But he later deleted it.
Then, Henry Wofford of CSN Bay Area threw some cold water on the spreading notion Jackson had received an invite to join training camp:
Nichols clarified:
Prediction: Jackson comes on with the Dubs in some sort of coaching role. Maybe he could be the real-life Jackie Moon sans ownership.
Anthony Bennett
So we’ve touched upon a comeback and ring chasing.
Now for the redemption.
The Cleveland Cavaliers took Anthony Bennett with the first pick of the 2013 NBA draft. That turned into a disaster.
He averaged just 4.2 points and shot 35.6 percent from the field before getting traded in the 2014 Andrew Wiggins-Kevin Love deal. Bennett’s luck didn’t pick up with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who waived him after one year.
The Toronto Raptors gave him a shot, but he only saw 4.4 minutes per game in 19 appearances while bouncing from the NBA to the D-League. The Canadian averaged 1.5 points with the Raps in 2015-16.
According to Michael Scotto of the Associated Press, the Brooklyn Nets could be his latest landing spot:
On July 3, Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders tweeted that Bennett performed well in the Nets’ minicamp workout.
Kennedy added it was a player, not an agent, who gave him the scoop:
Bennett seems much slimmer this summer after weighing in at 239 pounds before getting taken No. 1 overall, per DraftExpress. At 6’7”, he’s undersized as a power forward, so going for a more slender body is necessary.
In Brooklyn, there will be little pressure. The team isn’t going to win big (at least for a few years) and seems more focused on developing core talent than swinging for the fences.
With Thaddeus Young traded and the frontcourt largely unproven (Chris McCullough, Willie Reed and Thomas Robinson) outside of Brook Lopez, Bennett would have a fair chance.
It’s an ideal situation to rebuild his reputation around the league, if nothing else.
Prediction: Bennett signs an incentive-heavy deal with Brooklyn and boosts his stock.
