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Forced to choose, the Phoenix Suns pick both Dragan Bender, Marquese Chriss

Jun 23, 2016, 10:39 PM | Updated: 11:44 pm

Dragan Bender walks off the stage after being selected fourth overall by the Phoenix Suns during th...

Dragan Bender walks off the stage after being selected fourth overall by the Phoenix Suns during the NBA basketball draft, Thursday, June 23, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

(AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

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PHOENIX – The position needed to be addressed.

Without a power forward on the roster signed for next season, the Phoenix Suns landed a pair within the first hour of the 2016 NBA Draft, reacting swiftly with the lottery additions of international talent Dragan Bender and Washington freshman Marquese Chriss at Nos. 4 and 8, respectively.

The late talk leading up to the draft had the Suns debating between Bender and Chriss, two 18-year-olds, for their choice at No. 4, the first of their three first-round picks.

In the end, they got both.

“We hoped we could,” GM Ryan McDonough said Thursday. “It was really close between those two guys with the fourth pick. We went back and forth on it. They’re both tremendous young players. It’s really hard to find talented, young big guys.”

Though the 7-1, 220-pound Bender and 6-9, 225-pound Chriss are both considered power forwards, their skill sets are quite different.

“Dragan has the size and the length and the passing ability and the ability to move his feet on the perimeter that is rare and unique,” McDonough said. “And then Marquese Chriss, my goodness. Just an explosive athlete, vertical athlete. He came on to the game late. He was a football player and then got injured and took up basketball late.”

Added head coach Earl Watson, “Both guys can shoot 3s; off pin-downs, off the move. Both guys can switch pick-and-rolls at anytime. Bender, to me, has a great opportunity to play on the perimeter. He can handle the ball really well, and he’s open to growing; that’s always a positive.

“Marquese is really unique. He’s a guy that can play above the square, literally, like the way he jumps and catches lobs above the backboard is just amazing. And the way he has a finesse shot at the elbow is unique. He reminds me a lot of LaMarcus (Aldridge), just speaking to him, his personality and the way he carries himself.”

The Suns sent Sacramento the 13th and 28th overall picks, a 2020 second-round pick (from the Detroit trade involving Marcus Morris) and the draft rights to Bogdan Bogdanovic, a 2014 first-round pick, to move up five spots to acquire Chriss.

It was an aggressive offer, according to McDonough.

Moments before the trade news broke upstairs applause was audible from the press area located a floor below the Suns basketball offices.

“We were excited,” McDonough said. “We had them rated higher than eight, obviously. It was something that we came up with, the concept our group came up with was relatively late. We just started thinking about it this morning and tried to figure out if there was any way, so from thought to possibility to execution happened in a pretty quick period of time.”

The Suns had Bender and Chriss in town for pre-draft visits a week ago. Their individual workouts were unannounced.

Bender, the youngest player in the draft, became the highest Suns pick since the team selected Armen Gilliam with the No. 2 overall choice in 1987. It’s the second straight year the Suns selected the draft class’ youngest player, following Devin Booker.

Bender, one of an NBA-record 14 international players selected in the first round, doesn’t turn 19 until November, a month into the season. Chriss will be 19 in a matter of days, July 2.

McDonough admitted the pair are “a ways away” from being NBA-ready. Their upside, however, was just too good to pass up.

“We’ll sit up here and downplay what they can do to protect them and to be patient with them, but these guys have unique talents, unique abilities. Does that translate into winning NBA basketball games? I don’t know. Historically it doesn’t when you’re playing young players,” McDonough said.

The selections of Bender and Chriss comes five years to the day the Suns drafted Markieff Morris, who they had hoped would be their power forward of the future.

“With Dragan and Marquese, you usually don’t find those kind of guys unless you’re in the high-to-mid lottery (range),” McDonough said. “One of the picks was our own and we had to figure out how to go get another one, and I’m glad we were able to do that.”

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Forced to choose, the Phoenix Suns pick both Dragan Bender, Marquese Chriss