Anthony Bennett cut by Nets just 4 years after he was picked No. 1 overall

This might have been Anthony Bennett’s last chance. The former first overall selection was waived Monday by the Brooklyn Nets, his fourth team in four seasons and the second straight stint to end prematurely.

Bennett is currently the worst No. 1 pick in NBA history. In his four seasons, he has only played 151 games while averaging 4.4 points and 3.1 rebounds on 39 percent shooting. He had occasional good games, but his career started terribly and he’s never put more than a couple good performances together in a row. It took him five games to score his first basket.

When Bennett was cut by Toronto last season so they could sign career journeyman Jason Thompson, The Toronto Star reported on the team’s disappointment with him.

Privately, NBA people worried about his true love for the game, his dedication to conditioning, his willingness to consistently put in the time necessary. Everyone likes Bennett — he is a nice, shy, polite young man who people want to see succeed — but they all grew increasingly frustrated with his inability to grasp what it really takes in the cutthroat world of the NBA.

Bennett is 23 years old. In most cases, it would be premature to rule out any sort of comeback. But not being able to make it with the Nets — and not even after a season, but after just three months — feels definitive. It’s possible Bennett could rehabilitate his basketball image with a couple good seasons overseas, but right now, even that seems unlikely.

You hear about the biggest busts selected first overall from time to time: Kwame Brown, Michael Olowokandi, and Greg Oden usually top the list. But Oden was a bust because of his injuries, playing great in the sparse healthy moments early in his career. Brown and Olowokandi, meanwhile, both played 500-plus games as decent backups.

A closer comparison is LaRue Martin, the first overall selection in the 1972 NBA draft by the Portland Trail Blazers. Martin also played just four seasons, appearing in 271 games and averaging 5.3 points. All four years came in Portland, and Martin never got another chance in the NBA.

But even Martin’s statistics are better than Bennett’s — he played 120 more career games with twice as many points and rebounds.

Assuming we ignore the first few players selected first overall in NBA history — Clifton McNeely was the first pick in the 1947 NBA draft and decided not to play basketball, but the NBA didn’t even allow in-game coaching those seasons — then Bennett is the worst top pick ever.

Bennett never should have been the first overall pick. Mock drafts saw him going as high as No. 3, but generally in the mid-lottery, and it’s still not quite clear why then-Cavaliers general manager Chris Grant decided to gamble on Bennett with a No. 1 selection. Cleveland reportedly tried to trade the pick several times.

However, Grant didn’t pass on a LeBron James or a Tim Duncan. As it turns out, the 2013 draft was the worst in at least a decade. The Washington Post recently called it the worst ever (although the 2000 draft would like a word), and it certainly wasn’t just because of Bennett.

The best player selected went No. 15 overall in Giannis Antetokounmpo. C.J. McCollum at No. 10 and Rudy Gobert, who fell to the Jazz at No. 27, are the other players who have turned into stars. A couple more players in the draft have chances to do that still. Beyond that, there are a lot of quality fourth and fifth starters, some adequate bench players, and a handful of prospects who have already been relegated to the end of benches or dropped out of the league completely.

Bennett would have ended up as a bust no matter where he was picked, in all likelihood, and he was still projected as a lottery selection. But he wouldn’t have the same scrutiny forced upon him.

Picking first overall is supposed to change a franchise. More than half of the players selected first overall have been named to an All-Star or All-NBA team, while 11 have won MVP awards.

But the Cavaliers’ first overall pick turned out to be their second of three across a four-year span. Missing on a first overall selection — missing it worse than anyone has ever missed, mind you — isn’t such a big deal when you draft Kyrie Irving two years prior and Andrew Wiggins the following summer. It seems likely that whoever the Cavaliers had selected, whether it was Bennett or Victor Oladipo or Shabazz Muhammad, would have ended up in the Wiggins-centered deal that brought Kevin Love to the Cavaliers.

If you want to play the butterfly effect game, you could even argue that the Cavaliers might have won more games the season before LeBron James came back. More wins means a worse chance of winning the lottery, and less to offer Minnesota for Love, which was a factor in James deciding to return. Certainly, while the selection of Bennett will stand out for a long time, it won’t really be tied back to the Cavaliers themselves.

This doesn’t have to be the last we hear of Bennett, not with the high visibility the D-League provides and even the attention he would get with strong play overseas. You’d like to think the talent is there to some extent, especially since he’s still a 23-year-old. We don’t blame him for failing to meet his potential.

But at this point, it sure seems like there’s no chance he’ll ever reach it.