Most memorable NBA Draft moments ever
By Justin
The Blockbuster Chris Webber-Penny Hardaway trade, 1993
The most exciting part of the NBA draft is the frenzied trading season that opens up. This is when trades like Scottie Pippen for Olden Polynice happen, or Dirk Nowitzki for “Tractor” Traylor, and it seems normal at the time. Some draft nights are more wild than others, as a large number of guys are traded before they can even adjust their hats. Dan Patrick quipped once after a flurry of trades, “I feel like I’m landing jets here.”
The biggest draft night trade is probably when Orlando traded its number one pick, Chris Webber, for Penny a year after netting Shaquille O’Neal. Penny and Shaq would later reach the finals before the former’s injury problems overwhelmed him, while Webber was one of Shaq’s greatest challengers in the Western Conference when he moved to LA. There’s also one detail most NBA fans would notice — who moves up from pick No. 3 to No. 1 using three future first round picks? That’s an enormous payment for a player who wasn’t a can’t-miss-superstar like LeBron James. Those three picks, by the way, turned into Todd Fuller, Vince Carter, and Mike Miller, and Golden State didn’t even keep Webber.
Big trades like that are rare. They usually involve simple swaps of guys who aren’t top three. But there’s sometimes a trade like Ray Allen to the Celtics for the fifth pick, for example, which was shocking at the time because it was before Boston got Kevin Garnett — what were they going to do with a bunch of young guys and aging wings in Paul Piece and Ray? The Penny-Webber swap was marred by injuries years later, but if Penny had been healthy this could have been an even bigger moment for both franchises. And this was all captured on-air while other teams were still drafting. It’s that kind of excitement that keeps diehard NBA fans tuning in year after year with a thread of hope that we’ll see something we’ll remember for decades into the distant future.
Find more NBA Draft content at our FanSided NBA Draft hub and for updated scouting reports of all NBA draft prospects, check out Upside and Motor.