Yuta Watanabe is a prototypical Nick Nurse bench player. He’s a defensive-minded, no-quit, hustle machine who does so much of one thing — defense — that you can excuse the things he doesn’t do at the level you would like him to. Yes, that was a long-winded way of saying he’s an excellent defender, but the true mystery of Yuta is in what could come next.
Watanabe has a grand total of three NBA seasons under his belt and for as much as last season counts for anything — it surely doesn’t count for much at all — Yuta hasn’t quite had “the full NBA experience” just yet.