/ laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"
Tweet
Here is an article by Mark Montieth. There is little doubt in my mind that if Bender's knees would have been OK, that Bender would have been a real player in the NBA. Borderline allstar, 20 points per game type of player. I will always believe that.
Bender ready to move on
Former Pacers player stops asking 'what if?' about a playing career shortened by injuries
By Mark Montieth
mark.montieth@indystar.com
April 23, 2007
One by one they marched through the neighborhood and converged on his house, intent on removing as many belongings as possible.
The handsome brown desk in his office. The oversized furniture and the decorative vases, mostly in hues of purple. The plasma television. With any luck, the purple-felt pool table, too.
Jonathan Bender's Carmel neighbors responded to the flyers he stashed in their mailboxes last week and helped lighten the load of his move. They walked in with cash and checkbooks and walked out with armloads and carloads of bargain-priced goods.
It's an unfortunate, but in many ways appropriate, way for the former Indiana Pacers forward to leave Indianapolis.
His career was gradually stripped bare by injuries and disintegrating knees. An athlete worth millions had to settle for a career that returned only pennies on the dollar.
Bender arrived in 1999 a fresh-faced 19-year-old brimming with promise, a still-growing 6-11 kid with a 39-inch vertical leap, ballhandling skills and an accurate outside shooting touch.
He turned out to be an apparition. Fans saw him in glimpses, but mostly only read or heard about him.
Finally giving in to the reality of his knees -- the right one has no cartilage and the left still needs arthroscopic surgery -- he quietly slipped out the Pacers' back door midway through last season. He'll leave the city in much the same fashion once he sells the home that sits across the street from one of another former Pacer, Stephen Jackson, and Colts coach Tony Dungy.
Bender's house has been on the market for more than a year, enduring a gradual transition much like Bender. He played 78 games in 2001-02, his most productive season. He played 46 the following year. Then 21. Then seven. And, finally, in 2005-06, two.
He leaves with plenty of regrets over one of the all-time what-might-have-been careers, but no lingering bitterness. He admits, however, there was a time in his final, desperate rehabilitation effort, when he spent the summer of 2005 in Boston with physical therapist Dan Dyrek, that he struggled with the notion of becoming a has-been before his 25th birthday.
"I depressed myself to death then," he said. "I was about to go psycho. But after a minute it's like, What are you going to do? Keep killing yourself or just let it be?
"If it's going to happen for you, it's going to happen. If it's not, it's not."
It did happen sporadically. Bender averaged just 5.6 points in his 237 regular-season NBA games, but between the trips to the inactive list he offered tantalizing and dramatic outbursts.
Like when he scored 10 points in 13 garbage-time minutes against Cleveland on Dec. 10, 1999, becoming the first high school draftee to reach double figures in his NBA debut. Or when he blocked six shots in 25 minutes against Atlanta on March 17, 2002. Or when he scored 21 points in 29 minutes at Cleveland on April 2, 2003. Or when he scored 15 points in 16 first-half minutes against Sacramento on March 19, 2004. Or when he scored 19 points in 19 minutes in Game 3 of the Pacers' first-round playoff series with Boston in 2004.
If not for his inexperience and injuries, those performances would have been more the norm. He doesn't like to dwell on what he could have become with healthy knees, however.
"Oh, man, don't get me to thinking like that," he said.
"I always think of myself as a great player because of my abilities. Things that were hard for other people came easily out there. I always thought the sky was the limit."
Bender doesn't believe he could have done anything differently to save his career. His fate was probably sealed before he even got out of high school. A 6-inch growth spurt over a few months put untold stress on his knees, and so did his childhood games in the countryside of Picayune, Miss.
Like jumping off of houses.
"All that crazy ripping and running, that's probably a whole 'nother couple of seasons (lost) right there," he said.
"We didn't have anything to do, so everything we made up was kind of crazy. What kind of pleasure do you get going up on a roof and just jumping off? I don't understand it."
The Pacers didn't have the opportunity to check out Bender's knees before the draft because they made a deal with Toronto the night before to obtain his rights. But he had showed no hints of problems when he scored 31 points in the McDonald's All-American Game, breaking Michael Jordan's 19-year-old record. Chicago had checked him out thoroughly, and found no issues that he was ever made aware of.
Bender knows better than to complain. He still gets a paycheck every two weeks to complete the final year of the four-year, $27 million extension he signed after playing 78 games in 2001-02. An insurance policy covers the majority of it.
He's using that money to initiate charitable works through his foundation and for complex investments. He owns part of an island near the Bahamas as well as commercial property on the main island. He owns a recording facility in New Orleans, Studio 5504. He's financing a middleweight boxer in Houston, Lupe Martinez, who improved to 14-1 with a victory on Saturday.
"There's a lot to be thankful for," he said.
Soon he'll be splitting his time between New Orleans and Houston, where the weather is hot and his knees don't hurt as much. He'll continue lifting weights every other day to keep his leg muscles strong and take pressure off his knees. In fact, he looks more like an NBA player now than ever before. He weighs a fat-free 242 pounds, about 40 more than when he was drafted.
Sure, sometimes he wonders. A year of rest was to be the final stab at rehabilitation, and recent medical advances have made it possible to grow cartilage. But an 82-game NBA season is a different matter, and doctors aren't giving him much reason for hope.
"I don't want to be a lab rat," he said.
So his past drifts away, carried out his doors and into other people's homes.
It's time to move on.
Bender ready to move on
Former Pacers player stops asking 'what if?' about a playing career shortened by injuries
By Mark Montieth
mark.montieth@indystar.com
April 23, 2007
One by one they marched through the neighborhood and converged on his house, intent on removing as many belongings as possible.
The handsome brown desk in his office. The oversized furniture and the decorative vases, mostly in hues of purple. The plasma television. With any luck, the purple-felt pool table, too.
Jonathan Bender's Carmel neighbors responded to the flyers he stashed in their mailboxes last week and helped lighten the load of his move. They walked in with cash and checkbooks and walked out with armloads and carloads of bargain-priced goods.
It's an unfortunate, but in many ways appropriate, way for the former Indiana Pacers forward to leave Indianapolis.
His career was gradually stripped bare by injuries and disintegrating knees. An athlete worth millions had to settle for a career that returned only pennies on the dollar.
Bender arrived in 1999 a fresh-faced 19-year-old brimming with promise, a still-growing 6-11 kid with a 39-inch vertical leap, ballhandling skills and an accurate outside shooting touch.
He turned out to be an apparition. Fans saw him in glimpses, but mostly only read or heard about him.
Finally giving in to the reality of his knees -- the right one has no cartilage and the left still needs arthroscopic surgery -- he quietly slipped out the Pacers' back door midway through last season. He'll leave the city in much the same fashion once he sells the home that sits across the street from one of another former Pacer, Stephen Jackson, and Colts coach Tony Dungy.
Bender's house has been on the market for more than a year, enduring a gradual transition much like Bender. He played 78 games in 2001-02, his most productive season. He played 46 the following year. Then 21. Then seven. And, finally, in 2005-06, two.
He leaves with plenty of regrets over one of the all-time what-might-have-been careers, but no lingering bitterness. He admits, however, there was a time in his final, desperate rehabilitation effort, when he spent the summer of 2005 in Boston with physical therapist Dan Dyrek, that he struggled with the notion of becoming a has-been before his 25th birthday.
"I depressed myself to death then," he said. "I was about to go psycho. But after a minute it's like, What are you going to do? Keep killing yourself or just let it be?
"If it's going to happen for you, it's going to happen. If it's not, it's not."
It did happen sporadically. Bender averaged just 5.6 points in his 237 regular-season NBA games, but between the trips to the inactive list he offered tantalizing and dramatic outbursts.
Like when he scored 10 points in 13 garbage-time minutes against Cleveland on Dec. 10, 1999, becoming the first high school draftee to reach double figures in his NBA debut. Or when he blocked six shots in 25 minutes against Atlanta on March 17, 2002. Or when he scored 21 points in 29 minutes at Cleveland on April 2, 2003. Or when he scored 15 points in 16 first-half minutes against Sacramento on March 19, 2004. Or when he scored 19 points in 19 minutes in Game 3 of the Pacers' first-round playoff series with Boston in 2004.
If not for his inexperience and injuries, those performances would have been more the norm. He doesn't like to dwell on what he could have become with healthy knees, however.
"Oh, man, don't get me to thinking like that," he said.
"I always think of myself as a great player because of my abilities. Things that were hard for other people came easily out there. I always thought the sky was the limit."
Bender doesn't believe he could have done anything differently to save his career. His fate was probably sealed before he even got out of high school. A 6-inch growth spurt over a few months put untold stress on his knees, and so did his childhood games in the countryside of Picayune, Miss.
Like jumping off of houses.
"All that crazy ripping and running, that's probably a whole 'nother couple of seasons (lost) right there," he said.
"We didn't have anything to do, so everything we made up was kind of crazy. What kind of pleasure do you get going up on a roof and just jumping off? I don't understand it."
The Pacers didn't have the opportunity to check out Bender's knees before the draft because they made a deal with Toronto the night before to obtain his rights. But he had showed no hints of problems when he scored 31 points in the McDonald's All-American Game, breaking Michael Jordan's 19-year-old record. Chicago had checked him out thoroughly, and found no issues that he was ever made aware of.
Bender knows better than to complain. He still gets a paycheck every two weeks to complete the final year of the four-year, $27 million extension he signed after playing 78 games in 2001-02. An insurance policy covers the majority of it.
He's using that money to initiate charitable works through his foundation and for complex investments. He owns part of an island near the Bahamas as well as commercial property on the main island. He owns a recording facility in New Orleans, Studio 5504. He's financing a middleweight boxer in Houston, Lupe Martinez, who improved to 14-1 with a victory on Saturday.
"There's a lot to be thankful for," he said.
Soon he'll be splitting his time between New Orleans and Houston, where the weather is hot and his knees don't hurt as much. He'll continue lifting weights every other day to keep his leg muscles strong and take pressure off his knees. In fact, he looks more like an NBA player now than ever before. He weighs a fat-free 242 pounds, about 40 more than when he was drafted.
Sure, sometimes he wonders. A year of rest was to be the final stab at rehabilitation, and recent medical advances have made it possible to grow cartilage. But an 82-game NBA season is a different matter, and doctors aren't giving him much reason for hope.
"I don't want to be a lab rat," he said.
So his past drifts away, carried out his doors and into other people's homes.
It's time to move on.
Comment