Suns’ Dragic says Eric Bledsoe is “mini-LeBron James”

I’m as big a fan of Eric Bledsoe as the next guy, but…

The Suns acquired Bledsoe to be part of their rebuilding going forward, but this season they are planning to start him and Goran Dragic for stretches together. Phoenix wants to run so you can call this “going small” but you can bet other teams will try to target the undersized backcourt (Bledsoe is 6’1”, Dragic 6’4”).

Miami gets away with going small because they have LeBron James. He covers up a lot of problems on both ends of the court. Dragic told Suns.com that he thinks the Suns new backcourt will work for much the same reason.

“He’s a mini-LeBron James,” Dragic said of Bledsoe. “He’s got that big strength so when he’s in the open court, he’s unstoppable. Like a lot of fans know, I like to play fast basketball. When I get the ball to the other guy, he’s going to run. We’re going to score a lot of points.”

Score points? Yes. Mini-LeBron? Well… um…

Bledsoe has a lot of potential, we’ll see how he does out of Chris Paul’s shadow and in and up-tempo system that suits him. Fantasy players should consider him. But that’s a long way from mini-LeBron.

The Suns are in the “woeful for Wiggins” parade this season and likely will be around 20 wins. How far above that number they could climb will depend a lot on how that Bledsoe/Dragic backcourt works out.

For it to work much at all Bledsoe is going to have to be the LeBron of the Suns — the strong perimeter defender who can make a lot of other things work, too. No pressure though.