NBA Draft: Every team’s least popular pick ever

Los Angeles Lakers – Kenny Carr (1977)

Again, one of the things that’s truly telling when it comes to an unpopular draft pick is simply the fact that the player didn’t suit up for many games at all with the team that drafted him. When you factor that into the fact that the player didn’t play well for the brief time he was with that team and the fact that he was taken before a future Hall-of-Famer, that makes it look even worse. But all of this is describing what happened with the Los Angeles Lakers and Kenny Carr in the 1977 NBA Draft.

Coming out of North Carolina State, Carr was taken with the No. 6 overall pick after a wonderful career with the Wolfpack in college. At power forward, he wasn’t blessed with tremendous size, but had shown the skill to be productive coming into the NBA. Unfortunately he never actually showed that same skill while playing for the Lakers—and that was only made worse by the fact that the New York Nets took Bernard King one pick later (and even worse again by Jack Sikma going at No. 8).

While Carr had a couple of respectable years in the league, none of them were his two full seasons with the Lakers. He was traded to the Cavaliers just five games into his third year, thus affirming his spot on this list then.

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