Every NBA team has had their share of draft misses. Figuring out which was the worst for each is tough. Ordering those misses was almost impossible. Almost.
When our editor pitched a bunch of offseason story ideas, as a Knicks fan, this one naturally stood out. For much of the last two decades, schadenfreude is all I’ve had, and there’s no easier way to revel in the misfortune of others than by looking at past drafts.
(Yes, even when your team has traded away its selection)
More than that even, I thought it would be a nice challenge. Anyone can look at a team’s old mistakes and pinpoint the duds, but that alone doesn’t make a pick bad; there also needs to be an opportunity cost associated with the mistake.
Using my own team as an example, the selection of Mike Sweetney at ninth in 2003 was laughably terrible the moment Commissioner Stern read his name, but was it their worst pick ever? Not even close.
For starters, it’s not like there were any other reasonable alternatives. Is Jarvis Hayes still keeping Knick fans up at night? What about Mickael Pietrus? Marcus Banks, perhaps? You have to go all the way down to David West at No. 18 to find a player who did anything of note, which opens up a new problem: who gets the brunt of the criticism for passing on him?
Is it the Suns, who had the pick immediately before New Orleans and instead took the immortal Zarko Cabarkapa? Should it be the Celtics for taking Troy Brown one pick earlier, who had fewer career points and minutes than any other first rounder that year but was also used to obtain Kendrick Perkins later that night? Hell, should we blame the Pistons, who had a glaring hole at power forward that they eventually filled with Rasheed Wallace, but that they were hoping would eventually be occupied by the skinny Serbian they took second – one who a few people surmised at the time should have gone ahead of LeBron James?
These rabbit holes can go on for miles if you let them, so before we get into this, a few ground rules:
- Reasonable expectations at the time matter. Sure, David West ended up far better than Darko Milicic, but in no world was West ever going second;
- By the same token, someone else far better needed to be available with the pick that the team blew;
- Draft position matters. Expecting the Heat to select Russ over Michael Beasley at two is one thing; blaming the Warriors for taking Tim Young over Manu Ginobli at 56 is another;
- If a team’s pick underperformed because of injury, they’ll be judged less harshly than if the guy just stunk;
- All else being equal, the team with the pick immediately before a future star got drafted will be the one mentioned here;
- Bonus negative points if a team bypassed an obvious choice that ended up as the far superior player;
- If a team drafted a player but traded their rights before they ever put on the uniform, that move is eligible to appear here but won’t carry quite as much weight;
- Because of the amount of franchise movement, if a team changed locations, we won’t carry over their draft mistakes with them (i.e., the Thunder won’t be blamed for the sins of Seattle)
Lastly, our analysis here begins in 1966, the year the NBA did away with the old territorial draft rules that gave organizations priority in drafting players that went to college within 50 miles of the team’s home (otherwise the Pistons would be getting all kinds of hell for taking the immortal Bill Bunton ahead of future MVP Rick Barry).
With that, let’s get to it. Huge thanks to BasketballReference.com for all the free research they allowed me to do for this article. We’ll start from the least egregious errors and work our way up to the worst ones, culminating in a top ten that are in a class by themselves. Avert your eyes…
30. San Antonio Spurs: Cory Joseph
Leave it to the model organization of the last 20 years to be the one team that shouldn’t even really be on this list.
Since coming into the NBA in 1977, they’ve never made what anyone would call an egregious draft mistake, at least not by the standard we’ve laid out. Turns out picking in the mid to late 20’s every year has its benefits after all.
But we had to put something here, so for that, we go back to 2011. Ironically enough, that was the night the Spurs made arguably the best draft night trade in history, swapping George Hill for the 15th pick, a defense-first, non-shooter from San Diego State by the name of Kawhi Leonard. Even after a messy departure, it remains a banner moment for the franchise.
The crazy thing is it could have been even better. Fifteen picks later, another gritty small forward in the same mold as Leonard would get drafted by the Chicago Bulls with the last pick of the first round. The Spurs could have taken him with the 29th pick, but instead went with Cory Joseph.
Joseph went on to contribute to two Finals teams and is a fine player in his own right, but the guess here is that San Antonio would have rather paired Leonard with Jimmy Butler and formed maybe the greatest defensive wing pairing in the history of the league.
29. Utah Jazz: Trading Dominique Wilkins
The Utah Jazz have been incredibly well run for a long time now. As a result, they don’t have a blown draft pick that stands out as warranting criticism.
They did have one major draft-related mishap though, one that would definitely be higher up were it not for a) the fact that it came via trade three months after draft night, which isn’t really in the spirit of this list, and b) some other extenuating circumstances:
In 1982, the Jazz were coming off a 25-win season and desperate for talent. At the third spot, following James Worthy and Terry Cummings, the best player available was a kid with some hops from the University of Georgia, Dominique Wilkins.
Unfortunately, Wilkins played the same position as Utah’s 26-year-old three-time All Star, Adrian Dantley, who was one season removed from leading the league in scoring and would go on to do it again once more. As a result, they wanted Wilkins to play power forward.
He was less than thrilled with the idea. Said Wilkins last year, ” I wasn’t playing power forward. I was a small forward. Power forwards in them days was some big, physical and I’m not going to say what else and I didn’t want no part of that.”
Presumably in part because of this hesitancy, the Jazz dealt Wilkins to Atlanta in September for vets John Drew and Freeman Williams. Ironically enough, Wilkins would lead the NBA in scoring one season after Dantley did so for the second time in Utah. The Jazz did get their starting four a year later though, a bruising forward from Louisiana named Karl Malone. That worked out ok.
28. Oklahoma City Thunder: Cam Payne
Since they were violently ripped from the great northwest, the Thunder have done pretty well in the draft. Like the Spurs and Jazz, there really isn’t a glaring pockmark on their draft resume, at least not one that could have altered the course of franchise history (if this were a piece about trades, on the other hand…)
They still have to own up to Cameron Payne though.
It’s unclear whether, in the four years since he was drafted, Payne has gotten better, worse, or maintained flatline status. Yes, he was an intriguing point guard prospect, and the Thunder badly needed a backup following the Reggie Jackson trade. It was a more than reasonable chance to take, and a wasted 14th pick shouldn’t haunt you too much unless the next guy taken was Kawhi or Giannis.
That said, Kelly Oubre and Terry Rozier are both humans with discernible basketball skill, which is more than Payne can say. They would have helped the Thunder, and for all anyone knows, made a difference in the 2016 Golden State series that ultimately ushered Kevin Durant out the door. Each went in the next few spots after Payne.
It wasn’t all bad though. The Thunder unloaded Payne in a deal to get them Doug McDermott, who (along with the pick that became Mitchell Robinson) later helped them acquire Carmelo Anthony, who they then used (along with a future protected first) to get Dennis Schroder, who…
You know what? Never mind.
27. New Orleans Pelicans: Collective Foolishness
The Pels tried their hardest to bumble their way off this list, but they’re not getting away that easy.
On one hand, no, the Pelicans haven’t blown any draft picks by picking the wrong guy, even going back to their days as the New Orleans Hornets. That doesn’t mean they haven’t massively screwed up.
Over the last nine years, the only first rounders taken with picks owned by New Orleans that played a single game for the team are Anthony Davis and Buddy Hield, the later of which was traded midway through his rookie year. Every other pick was dealt away, most of them in a failed effort to surround AD with a winner.
Given his new confines in LA, this plan seems not to have worked.
Sure, it wasn’t all bad — Nerlens Noel for Jrue Holiday worked out great — but the rest of the pick-for-player trades were failures, the collective ineptitude of which resulted in a generational superstar getting dealt and gets New Orleans a spot here.
Worst of all, for their buffoonery, karma rewarded them with Zion freaking Williamson. There is no god.
26. Orlando Magic: Mo Bamba
Another team that has drafted just well enough.
They’ve had some disasters, mind you — Mario Hezonja, for one, and Fran Vazquez, who never played a minute of NBA basketball, a decade prior — but there was no reasonable opportunity cost associated with either of those picks. Would Willie Cauley-Stein, Emmanuel Mudiay, Stanley Johnson or Frank Kaminsky really have made Orlando that much better four years ago? What about Yaroslav Korolev or Sean May ten years earlier?
The Domantas Sabonis trade should probably be mentioned, as he was dealt along with future All-NBA guard Victor Oladipo for Serge Ibaka in a move that made no sense at the time and even less sense now, but in keeping with the spirit of this list, it’s not truly applicable.
So instead, we’ll go with the most recent entry for any team: Mo Bamba. It’s unclear whether any of the guys picked immediately after Mo will wind up being remotely special, but the odds are in favor of at least one popping.
Bamba, meanwhile, had about as disastrous a rookie campaign as one can put forth before a tibia fracture mercifully ended his season in March. His name had surfaced in trade rumors even prior to that injury, and with Nikola Vucevic’s emergence as a star, here’s betting the Magic wind up having some regrets, if they don’t already.
25. Chicago Bulls: Doug McDermott
For as poorly run as the Bulls have been at times since the Jordan years, they’ve actually done a better than decent job of drafting real talent.
Perhaps the best job of that was in 2014 when they nabbed perhaps the third and fourth best players in the first round after Joel Embiid and Aaron Gordon. As if getting Jusuf Nurkic and Gary Harris wasn’t enough, they selected them at the 16th and 19th spots, respectively. Few teams in recent memory have gotten more bang for their buck in the second half of the first round.
There’s only one problem: the Bulls then turned around and dealt both Harris and Nurkic to Denver for the man the Nuggets selected with the 11th pick in the same draft, Doug McDermott.
It’s not that either of the guys they gave up are All-Star level players (although both could still develop into someone with that ceiling). The trade was a disaster because the Bulls were damn good and maybe on the verge of becoming something even better.
The next season, Derrick Rose was mostly healthy, Pau Gasol made All-NBA Second Team and Jimmy Butler was named the league’s Most Improved Player, all of which led to Chicago pushing Cleveland to six games in the second round of the playoffs. McDermott gave them nothing, and when things went in the tank next season, it was the beginning of the end for Butler as a Bull.
24. Houston Rockets: Eddie Griffin
You could definitely see what the Rockets were thinking here.
The Rudy T years were coming to a close. Hakeem was a few months away from being traded to the Raptors. The team had a young Steve Francis, who would go on to make the first of three consecutive All-Star appearances the following season, but little else. They were still a solid team — 45 wins in 2000-01 — but they just missed the playoffs, and with three first rounders, had enough draft ammunition to make a swing big enough for a star that could reboot the franchise without bottoming out. They thought Eddie Griffin would be that guy.
He wasn’t. Griffin struggled with substance abuse until the Rockets released him just two years after trading all those picks to take him seventh overall. After a year in rehab and three forgettable seasons in Minnesota, Griffin died when a car he was driving struck a moving train, ending one of the sadder stories in NBA history.
What makes this trade so bad is less about what happened to Houston, who ended up with Yao Ming the following June, and more about how it benefitted the team they traded with on draft night in 2001, the New Jersey Nets.
With the three picks, they took Richard Jefferson, Jason Collins and Brandon Armstrong. Armstrong was forgettable, but Collins was a regular starter on two Finals teams and Jefferson is still the second leading scorer in Nets postseason history. Along with the trade for Jason Kidd, the draft night deal with Houston resurrected the franchise to heights not seen since it was in the ABA.
23. Miami Heat: Michael Beasley
Full disclosure: I struggled with this one.
On one hand, there’s an argument that this blunder should put the Heat much, much higher on this list. After all, Beasley spent two forgettable seasons with Miami, and the most memorable thing about his first stint there (he went back three seasons later) surrounded the circumstances under which he was dealt.
Meanwhile, Russell Westbrook, taken fourth, has won an MVP and made eight All-NBA teams, and Kevin Love, taken one pick later, is no slouch.
So yeah, they messed up. There’s two reasons why I felt queasy about putting it higher:
- Assuming Miami wouldn’t have felt as comfortable dumping Russ or Love as they were Beasley for the cap space needed to sign LeBron, there’s an alternate reality where James never comes because there isn’t the cap space to sign him and those championships disappear. It’s not out of the question.
- No one at the time was even putting forth arguments that anyone other than O.J. Mayo should be in consideration for the second pick. He wasn’t much better than the Beas.
All things considered, this is probably where it should be.
22. Boston Celtics: Michael Smith
I know, I know…there’s a world in which the Celtics — a supposedly forward-thinking organization always looking to pounce when other teams are asleep — could have ended up with Giannis Antetokounmpo in the 2013 draft.
I can’t put it here. Technically, the Mavs picked Kelly Olynyk before the Celtics traded up from 16 to get his rights. Even if the trade was agreed upon before the pick was made, who knows if it would have transpired that way if Boston planned to take the Greek Freak. Maybe Dallas only made the deal thinking Giannis would fall to them at 16. We just don’t know.
So we’re going with an error that there’s no question about. With 17 banners, there have been a lot more hits than misses, but there’s also an alternate timeline in which the one down period in Celtics history — the 90’s — could have been avoided.
The tragedy of Len Bias is well documented, but even with that sad occurrence, there was still a world where the Celtics didn’t have to have a decade of futility. In 1989, they had the 13th pick in the draft and selected Michael Smith, who averaged under five points over two Boston seasons before going to play overseas.
The next five picks included some decent talent: Tim Hardaway at 14, Dana Barros at 16, Shawn Kemp at 17 and B.J. Armstrong at 18. All made at least one All-Star team over their careers.
21. Los Angeles Lakers: Kenny Carr
It’s fitting that we have the league’s dominant franchises back to back here, and that they’re the last entries before we get into the top 20.
This one isn’t that bad, because the Lakers wound up winning the title three years after this pick was made. Still, it’s fair to wonder whether their run in the 1980’s could have been even more dominant had they gone a different direction on draft night in 1977.
That was when the first of their picks obtained as compensation for the Utah Jazz signing Gail Goodrich in 1976 conveyed. It ended up being the sixth pick, and coming off a conference finals appearance, the Lakers went with NC State forward Kenny Carr, who had two and a half less-than-memorable years in LA before being dealt to Cleveland.
The next pick was a born scorer from the University of Tennessee by the name of Bernard King.
The best part about this “What If” is that there’s little chance King would have had any negative impact on the Lakers’ future. The pick they used to draft Magic Johnson in 1979 was the other future first sent from Utah as compensation for Goodrich. By selecting King, the Lakers would have only been adding to their riches.
20. Dallas Mavericks: Terence Stansbury
It’s kind of cool that the second and third leading assist men in NBA history both played significant portions of their career for the Dallas Mavericks. If things had gone a little differently in 1984, John Stockton could have joined Jason Kidd and Steve Nash and made it three for three.
Dallas was already a good team, having made it to the conference semifinals in 1984 thanks to first-time All-Star Mark Aguirre and soon to be first-time All-Star Rolando Blackman. They did have a hole at point guard though, as incumbent starter Brad Davis was nothing special.
The team had just drafted Derek Harper with the 11th overall pick in 1983, so you could forgive them for passing on the promising kid from Spokane, Washington who had just averaged 20 and 7 as a senior for Gonzaga. Instead, they took Terence Stansbury at 15, who they immediately shipped to Indiana for a future pick. The man who would become the NBA’s all-time assist and steals leader went 16th.
As if passing on Stockton wasn’t enough, the following year they had the 17th pick and selected something called a Uwe Blab (I swear that’s not made up) one spot ahead of Joe Dumars. To complete the trilogy, in 1986, they were smart enough to take Mark Price with the first pick of the second round…and then immediately traded him to the Cavs for a future second rounder.
19. Phoenix Suns: Josh Jackson
It’s not quite as fresh as calling Mo Bamba a bust, but this still feels a little ripe.
It also feels more appropriate. With Bamba, we have no idea if any of the guys the Magic reasonably bypassed are going to turn out to be any good.
DeAaron Fox, on the other hand, is a stud.
Heading into the 2017 draft, the Suns already had Devin Booker. They also had Eric Bledsoe, who at the time was the team’s point guard and nominal best player, signed for two more years at a fair price of $14.5 and $15 million per season. There was a world where the season got off to a fast start and Bledsoe could remain entrenched as the lead guard of both the present and the future.
And then, three games into the season, came perhaps the greatest tweet in NBA history (non-DeAndre Jordan Hostage Crisis edition). Bledsoe was dealt to the Bucks later in the year for a pick that will likely be a late 2020 first rounder.
Why does all this matter? Because had Phoenix realized Bledsoe wasn’t long for the valley, they may have taken Fox over Jackson, who was arrested this summer after trying to sneak into the VIP section of a concert. Good times.
Fox was then taken fifth and has the Kings primed to make a move in the West as soon as next season.
18. Cleveland Cavaliers: Anthony Bennett
It feels wrong — really wrong, in fact — to only have the Cavs 18th on this list.
For one, their former owner repeatedly did something so asinine with his team’s draft picks that they had to make a special rule to prevent him from doing it: the Stepien Rule, which prevents franchises from trading away its own first-round selections in consecutive years.
That’s really the reason they’re so low here: they traded away so many first rounders over the years that they never got as much of a chance to louse up the picks as other teams.
On top of that, the pick that has to be deemed their worst, Anthony Bennett, was completely and totally out of left field. Heading into draft night, Bennett was being mocked in the mid-lottery by most and in the teens by some. Going first overall was a laughable shocker almost instantly.
And yet, there are 17 teams above them. Why? Simple: it didn’t hurt them that much in the long run. The best, most reasonable option, Victor Oladipo, turned out to be an All-NBA level player, but not before taking four years to figure things out. More importantly, things still worked out fine for the Cavs, and his being terrible may have aided them in landing the first overall pick the following year. They used that pick and the rights to Andrew Wiggins to trade for Kevin Love, who helped them win a ring.
Still, despite the low ranking here, they are in the Mount Rushmore of godawful NBA franchises when it comes to the draft, with maybe the worst first overall pick ever on their ledger.
17. Washington Wizards: Kwame Brown
One of our toughest choices.
On one hand: With the 12th pick in the 1985 draft, the Washington Bullets selected Kenny Green, a man whose less than illustrious NBA career featured a total of 265 points, or 36,663 fewer points than the man drafted immediately after him, Karl Malone.
On the other: With the top overall selection in the 2001 draft (when Malone was still making All-NBA teams and getting MVP votes), the Washington Wizards select Kwame Brown, who ended up carving out a semi-respectable NBA career, albeit one of the worst among those taken with the first pick.
Green has a legit argument. It’s the largest disparity of points in NBA history between draftees selected back to back, and the Bullets had a glaring hole at power forward. It would be filled by journeyman Charles Jones for most of the season. If they’d taken Malone instead, he’d have been paired with the Bullets’ starting center that year, a 7-foot-7 beanpole Washington took with their second-round pick in the same draft, Manute Bol.
But it has to be Brown. Getting the 12th pick wrong is far less justifiable than the first, and of the three other reasonable selections in 2001 — Tyson Chandler, Pau Gasol and Eddy Curry — two would have been considered successes. Heck, even Curry averaged 19 and 7 one season.
Brown would also go one to become the face of “too much, too soon,” a sentiment that got the NBA to change the age limit soon thereafter.
16. Denver Nuggets: Trading Donovan Mitchell
Of all the moves listed here, this one easily has the best chance to skyrocket up the list, into the top 10 or perhaps even the top 5.
It all depends on Mitchell. Right now, he’s an incredibly promising if inefficient combo guard that single-handedly revitalized the Utah franchise almost immediately after Gordon Hayward’s crushing departure. What he has meant to Utah already is enough to put this move up here, even if he never takes another leap as a player. If he winds up a multiple-time All-Star, it goes down as one of the great draft day miscalculations of all time.
That’s exactly what Denver did here: miscalculated.
They looked at their roster two summers ago and figured they already had their backcourt of the future in Gary Harris and Jamal Murray, plus Nikola Jokic, their de facto point guard. They didn’t need someone else who had to have the ball to be effective. It wasn’t nuts, especially when the main return in the deal, Trey Lyles, had shown signs of a promising future over his two years in Utah.
It hasn’t worked out. Lyles couldn’t get on the court for Denver in these playoffs, and the other player in the deal, Tyler Lydon, has scored 23 total points over two NBA seasons.
Denver will probably be alright regardless, but in a world where the Western Conference might now be up for grabs, the Nuggets may have missed their opportunity to separate themselves from the pack of would-be challengers.
That does it for the first half. As we head into the top 15, we’ll start including honorable mentions, as one will simply not be enough from here on in…
15. New York Knicks: Frederic Weis
As a Knick fan, even typing the letters of his name brings on a cringe and severe pain in the pit of my stomach.
It’s somewhat inexplicable that whenever New York’s ineptitude of the last two decades gets brought up, Weis’ name appears near the top of the list of follies. By himself, Ron Artest – the Queensbridge product who went to college in the Knicks’ backyard and was selected immediately after Weis in the 1999 draft — wouldn’t have reversed the fortunes of the franchise. Sure, he might have made a difference in the conference finals that year versus Indiana, the team he would eventually earn his lone All-Star birth with, but he wasn’t going to singlehandedly reboot the franchise as the Ewing era drew to a close. Artest has even recently admitted that he, too, might have been too lit for New York City as a pro.
But the Knicks — and Weis — need to be this high, in part because of all the picks they traded away over the years (the Cavs Corollary, if you will), but mostly because there may have never been a more obvious choice in NBA history than New York drafting Ron Artest. That’s why, despite the fact that it isn’t even one of their ten most negatively impactful moves of the last 20 years, the pick always gets mentioned in LOL Knicks parlance. The easy choice was staring at them in the face, and they whiffed.
All to take a guy who would never play a minute in the NBA and would become best known for Vince Carter elevating his nether-regions atop Weis’ 7-foot-2 frame in perhaps the most famous dunk of all time.
Yeah…15 probably isn’t high enough.
Honorable Mention: Jordan Hill (8th) over DeMar DeRozan (9th), 2009
14. Charlotte Hornets: Frank Kaminsky
I’m sure Frank Kaminsky is a nice man. Everyone at Wisconsin sure seemed to love him. He has a pleasant smile and is the type of guy you’d probably want to grab a beer with.
And who knows…maybe there’s still a ceiling he hasn’t reached as a pro. He did score over 20 points in three consecutive games late this season, the first time he’d done such a thing in four years as a Hornet.
We also don’t know, when Danny Ainge called up whoever happened to answer the phone for Charlotte on draft night in 2015, exactly which picks he offered in exchange for the ninth selection — the one used to take Frank — which is where Ainge intended to draft Duke standout Justise Winslow. The report at the time had it as four potential first rounders, but we may never know which ones.
We do know that Boston was in possession of two future Brooklyn picks, which would become the third and eighth overall selections in 2016 and 2018, as well as swap rights that ended up netting the first pick in 2017. The Celtics also already had the rights to a future Memphis first-rounder that has yet to convey, but is top-six protected next season and then unprotected the year after that. The safe bet is that at least one, if not more, of these picks were on the table.
If that is indeed the case, then for as nice a man as he is, Frank Kaminski was likely not worth turning down said deal for.
Honorable Mention: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (second) over Bradley Beal, 2012
13. Los Angeles Clippers: Michael Olowokandi
It feels wrong to put the Clippers all the way down here for what is arguably the most egregious first overall selection in the history of the draft.
Yet this is where they land, mostly for one reason: it’s unfair to say the Clippers passed on future Hall of Famers Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce and Vince Carter with this pick. No one had Dirk or Vince anywhere near the conversation for first overall, and at best, Pierce was seen as a borderline top three selection.
Realistically, Olowokandi beat out Antawn Jamison, Mike Bibby and Raef LaFrentz to be the guy at the top. Jamison made two All-Star teams but was a glorified third banana, Bibby was something like the tenth best point guard in the league for a handful of years, and LaFrentz was a bust.
So in terms of impact, it wasn’t enough to warrant being slotted higher than this.
Still, they have to be at least this high. Greg Oden could blame injury, Markelle Fultz’ issues are between the ears, and Anthony Bennett was a worse player but in a super-shallow talent pool.
The selection of the Kandi Man was more inexcusable than all of them.
Honorable Mention: Reggie Williams (fourth) over Scottie Pippen (fifth) and Kevin Johnson (seventh), 1987
12. Toronto Raptors: Andrea Bargnani
Did you know that Andrea Bargnani once averaged over 20 points per game?
It’s true. It came during his fifth year, the season after he signed his second contract with the Toronto Raptors — the one the Raps couldn’t wait to get rid of two years later, and might have given up an asset to rid themselves of had there not been a team silly enough (my Knicks — sigh) to take it on willingly and in exchange for real stuff.
Here’s the thing though: at one point, Bargitty Barg Bargs wasn’t looked at as a complete disaster. Did he ever live up to his billing as the first pick in the draft? Of course not. Still, he more or less showed steady improvement over his first five years, a span of time that saw him shoot 37 percent from downtown. The outline was there.
But that’s all he ever was: an outline of a good player that was never actually any good.
That alone doesn’t get him this high though, as we’ve seen from some of the lower entries on this list. What puts the Raptors here is the fact that they passed over future Hall of Famer LaMarcus Aldridge (it’s happening folks. Deal with it) to get him.
Then again, no Bargs means no Knicks trade, and no Knicks trade means no Jakob Poeltl, who was part of the package sent to San Antonio in the Kawhi trade.
Honorable Mention: Rafael Araujo (eighth) over Andre Iguodala (ninth), 2004
11. Sacramento Kings: Thomas Robinson
The universe has a lot making up to do to the Portland Trail Blazers where the draft is concerned (we’ll get to them in a bit). Gifting them Aldridge was a good start, but allowing Dame to fall to them at the sixth pick in 2012 was the big one.
Lillard just made his fourth All-NBA team, and more importantly for Portland, one that will allow them to offer him the designated player “Supermax” extension this summer. That should keep him in Rip City long enough to be considered the greatest Blazer in history by the time he calls it quits.
He is deserving of the honor. Lillard joins Steph Curry and James Harden as the only players with 12,000 points and 1500 3s since 2012. He’s also credited with setting an exemplary culture in Portland and has helped them become a model franchise for the rest of the NBA.
So yeah, it’s kind of ironic that the team that needed to pass on him so he could make his way to the Great Northwest has been the exemplar of dysfunction for most of the last decade.
Would Lillard have changed that? Who knows…but he would have joined a talented core that included Boogie Cousins (who almost became a Blazer last summer), Isaiah Thomas and Tyreke Evans.
Instead, the Kings took Thomas Robinson, the NCAA’s rebound leader the year prior who was viewed as one of the safest picks in the draft. He lasted just 51 games in Sacramento before being traded to Houston, one of six teams he’d spend time with (including Portland) over a five-year career. He’s been out of he league since 2017.
Honorable Mention: Joe Kleine (sixth) over Chris Mullin (seventh), 1985
10. Philadelphia 76ers: Markelle Fultz
The 10 biggest draft mistakes in NBA history are each so notable, and the stories behind and surrounding them so significant, that every one is deserving of its own documentary, or at the very least an oral history. They are the ones fans know by heart, where all you need to do is say one name and the listener’s mind immediately jumps to a mistake that forever changed the course of NBA history.
None of those stories are stranger than that of Markelle Fultz.
255 points. 33 games. Four 3-pointers. Fultz had five games in college where he finished with at least four triples.
Yet those are the totals Philadelphia got from the guard who was supposed to be the last piece of a championship puzzle. If Joel Embiid was The Process Alpha, Fultz should have been its Omega. Instead, he became its undoing.
The crazy part is that the Sixers can still come out of this era with a championship, maybe multiple ones. Embiid is that transcendent, and for whatever his faults are, Ben Simmons has the skills and size to dominate. If Jimmy Butler re-signs, they will be in the conversation for years to come.
The alternate universe they bypassed, though…it’s tantalizing to say the least.
We won’t know the full price of the trade that gave up Jayson Tatum until Boston picks in the Kings’ 14th spot on June 20, but it’s already one of the most lopsided deals in NBA history.
The only question is how much it ends up costing them. Along with Denver’s Mitchell trade, this one has the best chance of shooting up the list in the coming years.
Honorable Mentions: Jahlil Okafor (third) over Kristaps Porzingis (fourth), 2015; Shawn Bradley (second) over Penny Hardaway (third), 1993
9. Atlanta Hawks: Marvin Williams
It made no sense whatsoever the minute it happened.
Marvin Williams was an intriguing prospect. Even in 2005, a guy who you could put at the four that did stuff most fours can’t do was considered darn valuable.
Sure, he rode the bench for his college team and never quite looked the part of an NBA difference maker while he was at UNC, but hey…measurables! Amirite? Eh? Ehhhh???
Some years (like this one), the mere mystery about what “could” be is enough to get a guy picked far higher than he otherwise would in most drafts, when sure things go ahead of lottery tickets. Andrew Bogut, the first overall selection in 2006, was an incredibly safe if not a terribly high upside pick. After him, the other sure things were both point guards: Wake Forest’s Chris Paul and Illinois’ Deron Williams.
Of course, entrenched as the Hawks lead guard at the time was…well, actually…ummm…
They didn’t have one. Seriously. The following season, Joe Johnson led the team in assists per game, followed by Tyronn Lue. Royal Ivey was the nominal starting PG for most of the year.
Needless to say, either Williams or Paul would have made a bit more sense. The only caveat here is that either player likely would have made the Hawks immediately better, and in such a universe, they probably wouldn’t have stunk long enough to be in a position to draft Al Horford two years later.
Still, in terms of in-the-moment head-scratchers, this one is near the top.
Honorable Mentions: Draft Pau Gasol third, immediately trade his rights for Shareef Abdur-Rahim, 2001.
8. Memphis Grizzlies: Hasheem Thabeet
The easiest choice for any team on the list, and it’s not particularly close.
It’s hard to put into perspective just how bad of a pick this was. Thabeet averaged 3.1 points per game over the course of his rookie season. It would end up being his career high by a considerable margin. Thabeet’s career high for assists in a season is 11 … which is what James Harden averaged three years ago.
Thabeet, of course, was long since out of the league by then. Was that a surprise? Maybe, maybe not. This was, after all, a player who showed next to no offensive skill during his three college seasons before entering the draft. He was a few months away from his 23rd birthday when he played his first NBA game. It’s not like the Grizzlies should have been counting on some major leap here.
Harden, well … Harden is rewriting the record books as he goes along. He has become one of the half dozen or so players in the league that really matters, and what he is about to accomplish – finishing in the top two in MVP voting four times in a five year period – is an accomplishment boasted only by some of the very best to ever play.
If he had been drafted by Memphis instead of pilfered by a general manager who built Harden a perfect basketball ecosystem to fit his skills, would he still have reached the same heights? That slight uncertainty is the only reason this one isn’t higher on the list.
Honorable Mention: Traded draft rights to Kevin Love (fifth) to Minnesota for draft rights to O.J. Mayo (third, 2008)
7. Golden State Warriors: Joe Barry Carroll
Perhaps the most impactful trade in NBA history that didn’t involve the Lakers (and maybe even including the deals that netted Kareem and Kobe) occurred one day before the 1980 NBA Draft.
That was when the Boston Celtics shipped off the first pick to Golden State in exchange for the third pick and fifth-year center Robert Parish. Parish, along with the player the Celtics took with the third pick, Kevin McHale, went on to make a combined 16 All-Star games in Boston. Along with Larry Bird (we’ll be getting to him shortly), the duo helped lead the Celtics to three championships in the 1980s.
The Warriors, well…the Warriors didn’t come out of it quite as well.
It’s not that Joe Barry Carroll wasn’t good. He averaged 20 points and eight rebounds a game over six and a half seasons with Golden State and made an All-Star team two years after a contract standoff with management that saw him take his talents to Italy for one season in the prime of his career. If anything, the guy gets a bad rap after Peter Vecsey gave him the nickname “Joe Barely Cares” and it stuck.
Joe’s secretly-ok career is a mitigating factor but isn’t the main reason this pick is somewhat low on the list considering how much talent was going out in the deal.
One could argue that every one of the top six picks on our list directly affected at least one championship for the team that made the wrong choice. Here, despite the obvious league-altering effect this trade had on the Celtics, we have no idea whether making the correct pick would have significantly altered Golden State’s fortunes.
Would the Warriors have come close to replicating Boston’s success? In 1980, Golden State had World B. Free coming off an All-Star appearance and a 24-year-old Bernard King…but Larry Bird is Larry Bird. Maybe together they could have given the Showtime Lakers a run for their money a few times, but it’s not like this trade cost the Warriors as much as the half dozen teams above them here.
Honorable Mentions: 1986 Chris Washburn (third) over Chuck Person (fourth), 1986; Adonal Foyle (eighth) over Tracy McGrady (ninth), 1997
6. Brooklyn Nets: Kerry Kittles
Why are the Nets this high? For a pick they made when they were still in New Jersey? And when there were four teams after them that passed on Bryant following their selection of Kittles?
Three reasons:
- The Nets technically changed states, but New Jersey isn’t a real state anyway and should be honored to be considered another borough of New York City, even if it’s for this purpose.
- Brooklyn made maybe the worst trade in NBA history on draft night in 2013, but since we can’t actually count that towards this article, we’re splitting the difference and using it to look over the following:
- Yes, four other teams passed on Kobe after New Jersey, but the Nets are the only one that has gone on record as saying they were this close to picking Bryant but chickened out at the last minute because of threats from his agent. Their inclusion so high up this list is a reminder that above all else in the NBA, you gotta have cajones.
And that’s what the Nets will always have to live with. Would Kobe Bryant actually have followed through on his threat to play in Italy? Who knows. In any case, if ever there were a time to swing for the fences, it’s with the 8th pick in a draft when all the sure things are off the board.
Oh well.
Honorable Mention: Derrick Coleman (first) over Gary Payton (second), 1990
5. Milwaukee Bucks: Robert Traylor
Outside of Portland, who is in a class by themselves, no team has had as tortured a draft history as the Milwaukee Bucks.
A quick review…
1977: With the first overall pick, the Bucks take Kent Benson, who played two and a half middling seasons for Milwaukee before being traded to Detroit for a 31-year-old Bob Lanier. Four-time All-Star Otis Birdsong went second, while Hall of Famers Bernard King and Jack Sikma went seventh and eighth.
2011: Milwaukee takes Jimmer Fredette tenth, one spot ahead of Klay Thompson. They deal Fredette to the Kings the same night for the rights to Tobias Harris…who they ship out a year and a half later for 28 games’ worth of J.J. Redick.
2014: With the second overall pick, the Bucks select Jabari Parker over Joel Embiid, missing the chance to pair Embiid with the generational star they already had, Giannis Antetokounmpo (who, granted, takes some of the sting off everything mentioned here).
It’s a history of mistakes so bad that things like Thon Maker over Domantas Sabonis three years ago don’t even land on the radar.
None of those comes close to the worst one though: selecting Dirk Nowitzki ninth overall in 1998…and then trading him to Dallas for the rights to Robert “Tractor” Traylor.
Traylor scored 2085 points over his seven-year NBA career, a total surpassed by Nowitzki in two separate seasons, neither of which was his MVP campaign. Depending on what happens with Steph Curry from here on in, Dirk may be perhaps the last superstar ever to spend his entire career with one team.
4. Detroit Pistons: Darko Milicic
It speaks volumes that maybe the singe most derided NBA draft pick of all time can’t even pierce the top three on this list.
Without giving away the teams that follow Detroit here, let’s just say that all three of them missed out on the opportunity to draft someone that would have not only brought them a championship but a dynasty.
So let’s talk about Darko, and what exactly Detroit gave up in selecting a player who gave them under two points a game for two and a half seasons before being mercifully dealt to the Orlando Magic. Ostensibly, they would have added either Carmelo Anthony or Chris Bosh to a core that won it all that season and made one Finals and three conference finals in the four years after that. The thinking goes that one ring turns into two or three if they’d made the right choice.
It’s absolutely valid, and it’s an argument for this being at least one spot higher on here, maybe two.
The counters:
- Maybe Detroit, seeing the obvious promise of either Bosh or Melo, doesn’t feel the need to send out two first round picks in order to acquire Rasheed Wallace, and instead decided to toe the line between winning now and winning later. Ask Danny Ainge how that might have worked out.
- Even if they’d still made the Wallace trade, if Bosh had been the pick, they played the same position, possibly resulting in a James Harden-type scenario where his full potential was never reached until he was on another team.
- If it was Melo, well…are we sure he would have been a good fit on this particular Pistons team that thrived, on the whole, being greater than the sum of its particular parts?
As far as what if’s go, they don’t get much better than this.
Honorable Mention: Sonny Dove (fourth) over Walt Frazier (fifth), 1967; Greg Kelser (fourth) over Sidney Moncrief (fifth), Brandon Knight (eighth) over Kemba Walker (ninth), 2011
3. Minnesota Timberwolves: Jonny Flynn
At best, I would describe myself as a casual college basketball fan. I’ll usually tune in for a game where top prospects are facing off, and I love the first weekend of March Madness as much as the next guy. Tuning into conference tournaments, though, has usually been a rarity.
So I considered myself fortunate that on a random Thursday night during my 3L year in law school, I happened to turn on ESPN for the Quarterfinals of the Big East Championship. To this day, there’s never been a war of attrition quite like it. Six overtimes later, I was convinced that Syracuse point guard Jonny Flynn — who played 67 minutes and scored 34 points in a ‘Cuse win — was the second coming.
Apparently, the Minnesota Timberwolves agreed with me.
In their defense, there were real questions about whether Steph Curry could hold up in the long run at the next level — questions that subsisted years after he was drafted, which was part of the reason the Warriors got him to sign a second contract that doubled as arguably the greatest bargain in NBA history and set them up to bring in Kevin Durant and complete their dynasty.
Even so, having just selected a nominal point guard in Ricky Rubio at five, if you were going to draft a high risk/high reward small guard with the very next pick, why not make it the guy who had already shown flashes of transcendent offensive potential?
Just a thought.
Honorable Mention: Wesley Johnson (fourth) over Boogie Cousins (fifth), 2010
2. Indiana Pacers: Rick Robey
Of the nine players generally regarded as the greatest in NBA history — Mike, LeBron, Kareem, Russell, Wilt, Magic, Bird, Oscar and Duncan — five went first overall, while Chamberlain was a territorial selection. Bill Russell went second, and the Kings passing on him for Sihugo Green might have topped our list if we were going back that far and if the Kings hadn’t changed cities three times since then.
That leaves Bird and Michael, so it’s unsurprising that the teams that passed on them are our final two entries on the list.
As the team who didn’t take the guy still considered the GOAT by most, Portland passing on Michael has every right to be above the Pacers passing on Bird here, especially since Bird slipped all the way to six, while Jordan only went third.
In another sense though, this is far, far worse. Bird was born and raised in Indiana and rose to fame at Indiana State. His hometown Pacers had the first overall choice in 1978. If the Cavs landing the first pick was the most fortuitous draft happenstance in NBA history, this has to be a close second.
Best of all, the Pacers recognized Bird’s greatness and wanted to take him first overall, but passed after Bird told Indiana GM and coach Slick Leonard that he wanted to play out his senior year. The Pacers balked, and ended up trading down to three, selecting Rick Robey. Indiana traded Robey after just 43 games to — wait for it — Boston, where he’d win a ring in 1981 thanks to the player the Celtics ended up drafting sixth overall in 1978, Larry Joe Bird. Bird played out his senior year, made it to the National Championship against Magic Johnson, and joined Boston that fall. They won it all two years later.
It was the first of three rings and five Finals appearances for the Bird-led Celtics.
Indiana, meanwhile, has made one Finals in its NBA history, losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2000, the final season they were coached by…
Larry Bird.
1. Portland Trail Blazers: Sam Bowie
Some thoughts:
- It always puzzled me as a kid why the Rockets never took any grief for passing on the greatest player that ever lived. I mean … I get it now. Hakeem (then Akeem) was as sure a thing as there was in an era when big men still dominated — an era Jordan himself kind of ended — and it’s not like Houston made out poorly. Even so, this still bugs me.
- If the Jordan/Bowie thing never happened, there’s a real chance that Oden over Durant would still have Portland in the top spot on this list. Bird won three rings in Boston; are we sure Durant wouldn’t have exceeded that with the Blazers? Even assuming Brandon Roy’s career still takes the same tragic path — he was 24 and coming off the first of three All-Star appearances when Portland drafted Oden — Durant would have headed a core than included LaMarcus Aldridge and Nic Batum. They almost certainly don’t wind up with Dame later, but even so … that’s not a bad top three.
- There truly is no team that comes close to Portland when it comes to draft day misfortune. Not even remotely.
People forget about it because Bowie over Jordan came a little over a decade later, but the Trail Blazers had the first overall pick in 1972 and took LaRue Martin, who averaged 5.3 points over a four-year NBA career. Future MVP Bob McAdoo went second.
Four years later, Portland had the fifth pick and could have added Adrian Dantley (who went sixth) or Robert Parish (who went eighth) to a soon-to-be championship core, but opted for Wally Walker instead.
You could even argue that taking Ronnie Murphy one pick ahead of eventual Rookie of the Year Mark Jackson in 1987 could have been the difference between them winning a championship or not. Throw in Oden over KD and Bowie over MJ and, well…yeah.
Congrats to Portland on being da real MVP/GOAT of NBA draft history. You more than earned it!