Shortly after the first night of the draft ended, Minnesota Timberwolves general manager Matt Lloyd spoke on their decision to select French center Joan Beringer.
“It’s one of the rare cases where the best player available also had a fit. We were sweating it, I mean. I had to put this (jacket) on just so I didn’t embarrass myself.” Lloyd joked.
“It was a long night of waiting.”
The fit on the court makes sense. Beringer is an ultra-athletic 7’1″ center with unique quickness and defensive abilities. He’s playing in the Slovenian Euroleague, not at a blue-blood Division I school. Still, the 18-year-old Frenchman displayed the instincts, and people naturally compared him to Rudy Gobert.
Lloyd’s mention of fit prompted me to ask him a follow-up question.
“On a team full of good dudes,” I asked him, “what makes Beringer a good enough dude to fit in with the chemistry?”
The phrase good dudes comes from Tim Connelly, Chris Finch, and just about every player from the Wolves over the past season. All year, they raved about the quality of the people in their locker room, from Donte DiVincenzo and Julius Randle, all the way down to Leonard Miller and Josh Minott – even Anthony Edwards, their star player. The common title the players and staff gave each other was a bunch of good dudes.
Lloyd chuckled when I asked about Beringing.
“I didn’t know what to expect when we sat down with him. … He’s about as mature a person as you find,” Lloyd said. “He’s a great kid. He’s a kid, but he has world experience. … So, if I had to bet on his intangibles, I would… so if that’s the category of good dudes, he definitely fits into it.”
Lloyd felt Beringer was similar to many of Minnesota’s players. He’s mature for his age, like Jaden McDaniels and Edwards. Beringer also has world experience, like Gobert, and possesses great personal intangibles, similar to those of Mike Conley.
He sounds like a good dude.
We got to speak to Beringer about a half hour before Lloyd discussed the pick. I asked Beringer what fans need to know about him.
“I will give everything for you,” he said. “I will give my energy, my defense, and I will prove to you that I want to be the best. I want to practice hard every day.”
Someone else asked him how he feels about coming to Minnesota.
“I’m very happy, I’m very happy, I’m very happy,” he said. “To play with Rudy Gobert, it’s an amazing feeling. I’m very happy.”
In almost every answer he gave during the seven-minute phone call, Beringer brought up Gobert, or that he was happy to be in Minnesota, and wants to work hard.
Beringer learned English from his Serbian teammates seven months ago to prepare for the NBA. He grew up playing soccer and transitioned to basketball four years ago. Beringer helped his Slovenian team win the championship in his first professional basketball season, averaging 17.5 minutes per game in the tournament. He added 4.5 points and 5.5 rebounds en route to the title.
Beringer’s inexperience offers hope that the Wolves can mold him into a valuable piece of the future in a couple of seasons. At the very least, his athleticism is mesmerizing and worthy of the risk, as Connelly explained after the second night of the draft.
“At the end, I said, “Can you dunk from the free throw line?’” he said, smiling, “and he dunked from the free throw line.
“That was memorable.”
Beringer is not expected to be an integral part of Minnesota’s rotation next year. They expect him to develop for the future and be around the team when he’s not in Iowa.
Still, the Wolves will likely refer to him as one of the good dudes for most of the season. We won’t know how he develops and what role the future holds for him for a while. Still, at the very least, it sounds like the Wolves added another good fit for the team and another high-character player in the draft.
