From Beal to Zeller, 10 players ready for a breakout season

It happens every year. Suddenly, Steph Curry isn't just an undersized point guard; he's staying healthy, dropping 3-pointers and becoming the face of a shoe company. One day, Paul George (who?) is the 10th pick from Fresno State (where?), and people think the Pacers have lost their mind; the next, he's dunking on LeBron James and Indiana's got its next superstar.
The bust-out season is a thing of beauty. It's a confluence of opportunity, willing teammates, luck and timing. You have to have above-average talent; ask Salieri how competing with Mozart worked out. And you usually have to be of a certain age, of course; Brando was 23 when he hit a different set of boards, on Broadway, and starred in Streetcar; Little Richard was 25 when Tutti Frutti came out in 1957.
But the NBA is filled with talented people. Everyone plays well on occasion. To have a true breakout year, you're talking about All-Star-caliber play, over an extended period -- and enough winning to make a difference. You don't have to be on a playoff team to have a breakout, but it usually follows.
With that in mind, here are 10 candidates to have a breakout season.
• Bradley Beal, Washington: There's just way too much good stuff in the second-year shooting guard not to think he's capable of a bust-out season. With point guard John Wall out for the first third of last season, and with precious little else to work with, Washington got out of the gate 4-28. Beal looked overwhelmed at times and shot the ball poorly (though he had his moments even then). But as the Wizards got their pieces back, Beal's efficiency grew.
With Wall again healthy, Beal should thrive. His shooting percentages before Wall's return and after (and, it must be said, before and after the return of Nene, who also missed much of the early part of the season) look like they're of two different players. Beal shot 34 percent on 3-pointers without Wall and shot 50 percent with him. Wall and Beal developed quick chemistry, with Wall's attacks (and the presence of a credible 3-point shooter on the wing, usually Martell Webster) drawing defenses, Beal could comfortably step into a 3-pointer -- his stroke is as pure as anyone east of Golden State -- or use an underrated first step to get to the rim. (As he gets more comfortable handling the ball, it wouldn't be a shock to see the Wizards put the ball in his hands more often as a playmaker.)
Beal's feet (and, again, Wall's presence as a disrupter) should never make him a defensive liability. But he'll earn his keep on offense.
• Eric Bledsoe, Phoenix: The chains are off. There will be no limitations, minute restrictions or any other kind of impediment on Bledsoe. It's his show with the Suns. Chris Paul's backup the past two seasons for the Clippers, Phoenix acquired Bledsoe in a three-team deal last summer to get a 23-year-old who flashed in L.A. but never really fired.
That should change this season. The Suns are convinced that Bledsoe and Goran Dragic can play with one another and should be fairly interchangeable in the backcourt. If so, Bledsoe on the move, coming off of screens or in the occasional 1-2 screen-and-roll could be quite effective. (It will be more so when the Suns add to their talent base and get a few shooters to surround their guards and their first-round pick, center Alex Len.)
Oddly, Bledsoe shot the ball well from 3-point range -- nearly 40 percent -- but wound up shooting just 44 percent overall and had a mediocre .513 true shooting percentage. Will more playing time improve those numbers? The guess here is yes. At the least, he should get more steals and opportunities for runouts.
Bledsoe's bigger issue may be health. He had nagging injuries the last two years that sapped his biggest attribute, his quickness. If he doesn't get slowed down, the sky's the limit. Somebody has to score on bad teams, too.
• Wilson Chandler, Denver: Two years ago, Chandler was averaging 34 minutes a night and 16 points through the first 51 games of the season in coach Mike D'Antoni's system with the Knicks. But Chandler was part of the Carmelo Anthony deal and has not been able to stay healthy since coming to Denver. He missed all of 2011-12 and much of last season recovering from hip surgery.
Though he's been slow out of the gate in the preseason with a new slate of injuries, Chandler is a prime candidate for a bounce-back season.
With Danilo Gallinari on the shelf and Andre Iguodala gone to Golden State, Chandler is the clear top option at the 3/4 for Denver. Assuming coach Brian Shaw doesn't slow things down -- and it doesn't seem as if he will -- Chandler's floor game and 3-point shooting (41 percent last season) will aid the starters. (I was surprised the Wizards didn't make a major play for Chandler last summer ... he would have been a picture-perfect fit alongside Wall and Beal.)
• Monta Ellis, Mavericks: Through his years with the Warriors and Bucks, Ellis was often a high-volume, low-percentage shooter -- with one notable exception. In 2007-08 with the Warriors, his third season in the league, Ellis had a true shooting percentage of .580 and an effective field goal rate of .536. Both are by far his highest career marks in those respective categories. That season, Ellis, who spent his first two seasons splitting minutes at the two with Jason Richardson, became the full-time starter alongside Baron Davis. And that spring, as you recall, the eighth-seeded Warriors pulled off their huge first-round upset over the No. 1-seeded Mavericks. (Was it also a contract year for Ellis? Why, yes it was!)
Ever since that season, Ellis' advanced numbers have gone through the floor. Oh, he still scored plenty (his 25.5 points a game in 2009-10 was sixth in the league), but his teams didn't accomplish very much. When he was traded from Golden State to Milwaukee in 2012, Mark Jackson didn't seem too broken up about it. Nor did the Bucks raise much of a fuss when Ellis signed a three-year deal with Dallas in the summer.
But Ellis has never played with a teammate as accomplished as Dirk Nowitzki, and he's never had a coach as demanding as Rick Carlisle. Carlisle worked wonders with O.J. Mayo last season, and the bet here is the combo of Carlisle, Nowitzki and a rock-solid Jose Calderon at the point will get the best out of Ellis. Why shouldn't Ellis become as proficient at the elbow screen and roll with the Diggler as Jason Terry was? Ellis should thrive in Dallas and win again as he did all those years ago in Golden State.
• John Henson, Milwaukee: The word on Henson coming out of North Carolina was that he would rebound and block shots in the pros, but the offense would come later in his rookie season. During a stretch of nine games in November and nine in April, Henson raised his scoring and rebounding from 6.6 points and 4.1 rebounds a game in November to 9.2 ppg and 8.9 rpg, respectively, in April. That April average was skewed by a monster 17-point, 25-board game against Orlando, but Henson looked more comfortable as the year went on.
The expectation is for continued growth, and perhaps something more. It's "perhaps" because Henson would have to play next to center Larry Sanders, and with their combined lack of perimeter skills, they might not be the best match, leaving Ersan Ilyasova the starter over Henson at power forward.
But Bucks general manager John Hammond showed he has the green light from owner Herb Kohl to blow the roster up, as evidenced by the series of deals and signings Milwaukee made over the summer. Henson was Hammond's Draft pick and teams don't like to give up on people for whom they vouched.
So it wouldn't surprise to see further weaning of the Bucks' frontcourt, which still includes veterans like Ekpe Udoh. In an increasingly small NBA, a slim big who can block and rebound like Henson has room to grow. And with guards like Mayo and Gary Neal who will command attention, Henson should have room to operate.
• Enes Kanter, Utah: With Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap both gone, either Kanter or Derrick Favors figures to get a lot of low-post love this season as the Jazz struggle to score points. But the bet is on Kanter, who has remade his body and is ready to finally get regular playing time. He was ineligible at Kentucky and never played a second for the Wildcats. In the NBA, he fell deep behind in Utah's big man rotation his first season-plus in the league. I think Kanter's more developed low-post game (in comparison to Favors') will get him more touches and he'll know what to do with them.
Kanter's PER last season was better than Roy Hibbert's, DeAndre Jordan's and Nene's, and his rebound rate was better than those of LaMarcus Aldridge, Nikola Pekovic and Brook Lopez. And he did that in just a little more than 15 minutes a night. He should get a lot more run this season.
• Andrei Kirilenko, Brooklyn: For the money ($3.1 million), Kirilenko may have been the summer's best free-agent pickup. And the 32-year-old should return to the form he displayed early in his career with the Jazz, when he was a whirling dervish of defensive chaos-making. This was before the Jazz became the team of Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer, and Kirilenko was reduced to a sideman. This was before the injuries and the self-doubt and everything that has made a lot of people forget how good AK-47 was.
Playing alongside the Nets' menagerie of talents, Kirilenko will do what he does best -- stuff the stat sheet, especially on defense, with a couple of blocks and few steals. If he's healthy, he can still be utilized defensively on threes and fours. Plus, you don't realize how long his arms are until you throw a casual skip pass in his direction. Brooklyn has some interesting defensive lineup options between Kevin Garnett, Kirilenko, All-Star Brook Lopez and the way-smart and still-long Shaun Livingston.
And, playing for countryman and Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov is the closest thing Kirilenko can come to fulfilling the pride of playing internationally for their native Russia, which went on an unlikely run in 2012 in the London Olympics to the bronze medal. With Brooklyn's large Russian population, and with New York affording his wife, Masha, a former pop star in Russia, additional opportunities, the pay cut Kirilenko took to come to Brooklyn should be viewed more as an investment toward future on- and off-the-court successes.
• Jeremy Lamb, Oklahoma City: It's easy to forget, because it was so long ago (2011!), that Lamb is a big-time talent. As a freshman at UConn, he was on the Big East All-Tournament team, the Final Four All-Tournament team and scored all 12 of his points in the second half of Connecticut's national championship victory over Butler. (Because that game was so dreadful, you may not remember it.)
So Lamb, penciled in to replace Kevin Martin at shooting guard, isn't being asked to re-create himself. With Kevin Durant (and, eventually, Russell Westbrook) alongside him, Lamb will get plenty of single coverage and lots of weakside opportunities to drive or spot up for open 3-pointers.
And Lamb is well-versed in what the Thunder want from their two guard, having worn out I-44 last season on endless trips back and forth between OKC and its NBA Development League team, Tulsa. With the 66ers, Lamb was a D-League All-Star, averaging 21 points a game. He doesn't have to be an NBA All-Star this season to justify his place. He just has to score when he can and give a credible effort on defense. He's off to a slow start shooting in the preseason, but if the Thunder are going to survive until Westbrook returns, they cannot discourage Lamb from letting it fly.
• Jonas Valanciunas, Toronto: Waiting for the 21-year-old Valanciunas, literally and figuratively, may have helped cost former GM Bryan Colangelo his job. But it was the right call. Valanciunas took a year to come over to the NBA after Colangelo took him No. 5 in the 2001 Draft. Valanciunas also took the better part of last season, his rookie season in Toronto, to start living up to his potential. But it's a vast potential, and Valanciunas should do even more this season.
He had a terrific Las Vegas Summer League, earning MVP honors while building on his last two months of the regular season. During those final two months, he shot 63 percent and was in double figures in 17 of the Raptors' last 19 games.
Toronto's hope is that the 7-foot-1 center makes an even bigger jump this season. The Raptors were using the words "Valanciunas" and "All-Star" in Vegas.
"He's still learning," Raptors coach Dwane Casey said Saturday. "The main thing with him is he had such a long way to go to learn the NBA, just the nuances of the NBA, the timing, the quickness ... he came in blind. We had to tell him who the players were, what their strengths were. And he missed all of training camp last year. That start [last season] was a lot of him not knowing what was going on, and getting his timing back. As the year got better, he got better."
Valanciunas has put on about 10 pounds from last season, which should be more than enough for him to be able to hold his position in the paint.
"We can go to him in the post," Casey said. "He's not a lot bigger, and plus, he doesn't need to get a lot bigger. You don't want him to bulk up too much. He's going to naturally get bigger by just getting older."
But his biggest improvements have to come at the defensive end. Fouls were a problem for him, as was understanding of the defensive three-second rules. The Raptors have worked with him extensively on the "Hibbert" (named after Roy, of course) defense -- jumping vertically to challenge shooters instead of reaching and hacking.
The combo of Vegas and playing for Lithuania in EuroBasket 2013 seems to have galvanized Valanciunas. The Raptors see a growing confidence in him.
"He's far more comfortable in the NBA games," Casey said. "More confident, moving with more confidence, understanding where to go, what to do. I thought it gave him a sense of belonging, that I belong here. He's got a little swagger from the Summer League. Just being one of our primary interior scorers will be a great year for him, quarterbacking out of the post. And defensively, understanding the nuances of the NBA, the speed of the NBA. We need a rim protector and he needs to be a rim protector for us."
• Cody Zeller, Charlotte: Of all the rookies taken in the top half of the Draft, Zeller is one of the more likely to have a major impact right away. As long as the Bobcats aren't asking him to bang in the post against centers on a regular basis, Zeller's ability to get up and down the court should be a natural complement to Al Jefferson inside. If Jefferson isn't there (and he already has a sprained ankle), Zeller's skill set doesn't get to shine.
Bobcats coach Steve Clifford said the just-turned-21-year-old Zeller was the most talented rookie in the Draft. Whether that's true is a matter of debate. But Charlotte's belief in his skills is clear when you consider the offensively challenged Bobcats passed on Ben McLemore to take Zeller. (You'd like to think this means Ben Gordon will be taken out of drydock this season.)
You could see what Charlotte saw in Zeller during Summer League (I know, I know). He made perimeter jumpers from the key with ease and you could imagine him being able to shot-fake and get to the rim against fours and fives that don't want to come out there and challenge him. And when he gets up a head of steam, there should be any number of alley-oop opportunities.