Using the power of hindsight, this post takes a look at the worst choices teams made with the #1 pick in the NBA draft. Over the last 30 years, there have been a lot of busts at #1. After all, there isn’t a player named LeBron in every draft. Some of the busts have been gambles that didn’t pay off, some of them have been players who were good before the NBA but just couldn’t cut it in the league, and then there are some that just make you wonder what the hell the team was thinking. These rankings will focus on two factors: player production (or lack thereof) and what the team gave up by not using the pick on another player. Without further ado, here’s the list:
#10. Mark Aguirre: 46 Career Wins Produced, 0.080 Career WP48
Wait a minute, wasn’t he a starter on a championship team? Yes, but so was Derek Fisher. Aguirre wasn’t terrible, but posted below average numbers for the majority of his career, with a career best WP48 season of .134. Not exactly what you would expect from a #1 pick.
Who the Mavericks Should Have Taken:
Buck Williams. One of the most underrated players ever in the NBA, Williams produced 198 wins at a rate of 0.224 WP48 over his career.
Who Else They Could Have Taken:
Larry Nance: 155 Career Wins Produced, 0.243 Career WP48
#9. Allen Iverson: 62.3 Career Wins Produced, 0.080 Career WP48
He should have gone to practice
Certainly the most controversial player on this list since most conventional NBA fans consider Iverson to have been a great player, he was actually below average for his career. What makes this pick worse is the players the Sixers could have snatched up had they possessed the power of hindsight: an all time great center, one of the best point guards of the next 15 years, and one of the best shooting guards of the next 15 years.
Who Philly should have taken:
Two words: Ben Wallace. An interior player this productive only comes around once in a while. He has produced a jaw dropping 198 wins in his career (over 3 times what Iverson did) with a WP48 of .305. He produced 27.1 wins one season with a .452 WP48.
Who else they could have taken:
Of course, no one saw Ben Wallace’s dominance coming (most people will even deny it today), but even without considering him, the Sixers had a lot of good players to choose from:
Steve Nash – 161.4 Career Wins Produced, .227 Career WP48; best season: 19 Wins Prodcued
Kobe Bryant – 169.4 Career Wins Produced, .203 Career WP48; best season: 18.4 Wins Produced
Marcus Camby – 158.4 Career Wins Produced, .281 Career WP48; best season: 19 Wins Produced
Ray Allen – 141.3 Career Wins Produced, .166 Career WP48; best season: 17.4 Wins Produced
#8. Mychal Thompson: 48.7 Career Wins Produced, 0.084 Career WP48
Another Champion on the List
I hate to put Thompson on the list because I went to school with his son, but there are two reasons he is here: Larry Bird. Oh yeah, and he is below average for his career. And a couple of other great players were passed up in favor of him.
Who Portland Should Have Taken:
Larry Bird (the Larry Bird of basketball). I know, I know, they wanted someone to make an impact immediately, and he wasn’t going to come to the NBA for another year, but come on. Here’s a guy who produced 262 wins in his career with a .365 career WP48. That’s worth waiting for.
Who Else They Could Have Taken:
Maurice Cheeks - 141.4 Career Wins Produced, .195 Career WP48
Michael Ray Richardson – even with a cocaine problem, he was a damn productive player – 88.6 Career WP, .229 Career WP48; 21.4 WP one season.
#7. Kent Benson: 23.2 Career Wins Produced, 0.071 Career WP48
Who? Kent Benson isn’t a household name, and for good reason. He wasn’t very productive.
Who Milwaukee Should Have Taken:
Jack Sikma, the old Sonic great. Like Benson, he was a big man. Unlike Benson, he was very productive, with career numbers of 153 WP and .199 WP48.
Who Else They Could Have Taken:
Marques Johnson (who produced almost as many wins his rookie season as Benson did his entire career) – 101 Career WP, .204 Career WP48
Cedric Maxwell – 88.6 Career WP, .179 Career WP48
#6. Glenn Robinson: 39.5 Career Wins Produced, 0.074 Career WP48
Ah yes, Big Dog Glenn Robinson. What happened to him, anyway? That’s right, he was a bust. The Bucks agreed to a 10 year, 60 million dollar contract with Robinson before he even played his first game in the league. Man, they should have taken the other guy, who was that again? Oh yeah, just one of the greatest point guards of all time.
Who Milwaukee Should Have Taken
Jason Kidd – 293 Career WP, .301 Career WP48. What else can I say?
Who Else They Could Have Taken
Grant Hill – 146 Career WP, .213 Career WP48; best season: 26 Wins Produced. Doesn’t seem great now, but in his prime he was a beast.
#5. Joe Smith: 36.4 Career Wins Produced, 0.065 Career WP48
How do you top picking someone extremely unproductive over one of the greatest point guards of all time? You pick someone even more unproductive over one of the greatest power forwards of all time! At least that’s what the Warriors did when they selected Joe Smith in 1995.
Who the Warriors Should Have Taken:
Probably the biggest no-brainer on this list: Kevin Garnett. You know, the guy who has produced 281 wins with a career WP48 of 0.324, and one of the only players to ever break 30 wins in a single season. Take into account that he plays the same position as Smith, and it makes it all the worse.
#4. Joe Barry Carroll: 11.3 Career Wins Produced, 0.024 Career WP48
Carroll was extremely unproductive, producing fewer wins in his career than what one would expect an average player to produce in two seasons. Also, does anyone else think the Warriors had some kind of debt to the Boston mafia? Think about it – the Warriors traded Robert Parish to obtain this pick, and passed up on Kevin McHale with this pick, allowing Boston to draft him and put themselves into the position where they were one Larry Bird away from 80′s dominance (perhaps Portland had debt as well).
Who the Warriors should have taken:
Kevin McHale – 111.9 Career WP, 0.178 Career WP48
#3. Kwame Brown: 15.6 Career Wins Produced, 0.058 Career WP48
Any of the final 3 could easily be #1. In fact, it was difficult for me to decide who went where, and I actually had Kwame at #1 until the last second. Kwame is clearly extremely unproductive, albeit not nearly as unproductive as #2 or #1. But, the issue with Kwame is that there were so many great players – especially great centers – in this draft, and the Wizards took the one who was a total bust.
Who the Wizards Should Have Taken:
Pau Gasol. The two time champ tops the list of great players in the 2001 draft that the Wizards chose Kwame over. Gasol has produced 118 wins over his career at a rate of 0.217 WP48.
Who Else They Could Have Taken:
Tyson Chandler – 85 Career WP, 0.223 WP48; best season: 15.8 WP
Gerald Wallace – 85 Career WP, .215 WP48; best season: 19.4 WP
Troy Murphy – 68 Career WP, .176 WP48; best season: 17.0 WP
Zach Randolph – 62 Career WP, .143 WP48; best season: 16.5 WP
#2. Andrea Bargnani: -15.0 Career Wins Produced, -0.065 Career WP48
Unfortunately for the Raptors, not all foreign big men that can shoot become Dirk Nowitzki. Bargnani is historically unproductive. How unproductive? He single-handedly cost his team over 6 wins last season, the fifth worst season of any player since 1977. He is also the only player on this list to never make it into the positive range for a single season. There are only two reasons he is not #1 on this list: 1. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt because he is still relatively young, and maybe he can still learn to rebound, and 2. his draft year was very bad, especially for big men.
Who the Raptors Should Have Taken:
Rajon Rondo. While the Raptors already had a good young point guard (only decent at the time), Jose Calderon, it is hard to pass up an elite PG like Rondo. Rondo has already produced nearly 66 wins in his career at a rate of 0.257 WP48.
Who Else They Could Have Taken:
Brandon Roy – 43 Career WP, .179 Career WP48
#1. Michael Olowakandi: -4.3 Career Wins Produced, -0.016 Career WP48
Come on, don’t act like you didn’t see this coming. The Kandi Man had no business going #1 in the first place, and his numbers were remarkably bad. Costing his teams wins over his entire career, he never once came close to producing at the rate of an average player over a season, with a career best WP48 of 0.032. Not only that but they could have had an historically good offensive big!
Who the Clippers Should Have Taken
Dirk Nowitzki. The only time the soft foreign big man was a good pick, he didn’t go top 5. Nowitzki has produced 156 wins over his career at the rate of 0.207 WP48.
Who Else They Could Have Taken
Paul Pierce – 156 Career WP, 0.210 WP48
Vince Carter – 107 Career WP, 0.163 WP48
Honorable Mention
Greg Oden: 8.6 Career WP, 0.228 WP48 – A bust, yes, but two reasons he didn’t make this list: 1. he is still young and can still produce, 2. when he has actually played he has been very productive.
Kenyon Martin: 35.2 Career WP, 0.080 WP48 – it’s hard to penalize for this one, considering it was probably the worst draft class of all time.
Danny Manning: 41.6 Career WP, 0.083 WP48, best season: 10.7 WP, .195 WP48
Ralph Sampson: 29.6 Career WP, 0.090 WP48; best season: 10.8 WP, .192 WP48
Will Irving be next? Probably not, but you never know!
-James
Nerd Numbers
June 20, 2011
James,
Awesome work as always! I’ve done a slightly different take on some of this. Career WP is a good way to go but another way is to look at the player’s first X years. Iverson was actually about as good as a player as Kobe, Marbury, Camby and Nash his first four years. Eventually they blossomed and he did not.
I’m amazed Bargnani is #2 though given his length of time compared to other players. He really is quite bad!
dm
June 22, 2011
Maybe I’m just a bitter Raptor fan but come on it’s got to be Andrea Bargnani.
-15 wins produced?!
Oh and he’s not going to suddenly learn to rebound, in fact considering he’s now going on age 26 he’s probably never going to get anymore productive then he is now.
jbrett
June 23, 2011
Nice list, James. To be fair to Milwaukee in ’77, they DID draft Marques Johnson–two picks later. Hurts me to see Ralph Sampson there, even in honorable mention; what might have been, if he’d come out earlier and someone had made him play like a center.