This list is going to be fun until you get to the page with your team. Then the pain may set in.
Sporting News looks at the biggest missed opportunities in NBA Draft history team-by-team, from a Pistons pick that would have been smart but also may have cost them a title to a Wizards pick that might have made Michael Jordan's playing days less painful.
We tried to keep perspective on what each player we called a bad choice offered his team. We also tried to be realistic about a player's stock entering the night of the draft, so that we avoided cases such as every team passing on Manu Ginobili.
But we had fun with this look through NBA history. Flip through this gallery to see NBA icons in the jerseys they probably should have been wearing.
After a 13-69 season in 2004-05, the Hawks had one clear-cut position of strength: forward. So with two proven point guards on the board, they of course ignored that need in favor of drafting a forward who was a college sixth man. Paul and Deron Williams (who went third overall) became All-Stars, while Williams has had a solid but unspectacular NBA career.
A lot of teams (including the Warriors, twice!) passed on Green. So maybe pegging him to the Celtics seems like a stretch. But Boston needed big men desperately and drafted two. Sullinger has become an OK rotation player, while Melo was one of the worst first-rounders to actually play in the NBA in recent memory. Green, meanwhile, has blossomed into a star for the Warriors, and the Celtics are desperate for a star and want to play the exact style that fits Green's skill set perfectly.
Hopson averaged 29 points a game for a decent Ohio State team, so the mistake is understandable. But man, this was a huge miss. Pippen, playing the same position, was the unproven but ridiculously athletic guy out of the small school (Central Arkansas). And while Hopson played five NBA seasons, Pippen was the second-best player on six NBA championship teams en route to the Hall of Fame.
In 1996, the supposed logic was reasonable behind trading a high school shooting guard for a proven center in Vlade Divac. Bryant fell all the way to No. 13, so don't let anyone tell you that this trade looked horrible at the time — especially given the since-corroborated reports that Bryant tried to force his way to Los Angeles. But Bryant was right there, in the Hornets hands, and he didn't have nearly as much leverage as his actions suggested. And moving Divac opened the door for the Lakers to bring in Shaquille O'Neal.
The Bulls and Trail Blazers agreed to a draft-day trade in this one, with the Blazers sending Thomas and defensive-minded small forward Viktor Khryapa to the Bulls for Aldridge and a future second-rounder. Thomas played 3.5 seasons with the Bulls, mixing flashes of brilliance with maddening inconsistency and poor habits on and off the court. Aldridge had a great 10-season run with the Blazers even though he left for San Antonio in 2015.
Imagine if this pick happens. The Kevin Love trade may not go down — or at least wouldn't have included Oladipo in Bennett's place — and LeBron James gets a backcourt of Kyrie Irving and Oladipo to keep the pressure off him.
The Mavericks of recent years have had a lot of weak draft picks, but they've come at lower-impact points in the draft. Here, they may have missed out on a legitimate 1980s championship opportunity. Perkins was a very good player and a key cog in the Mavs' 50-plus-win teams in 1986-87 and 1987-88. But Barkley was entering his prime at that time and would have given Mark Aguirre, Rolando Blackman and Derek Harper the star down low that the team needed.
Tskitishvili is one of the all-time worst NBA Draft selections. The Nuggets halfway made up for the gaffe by selecting Nene at No. 7, but that also means they skipped on two-time All-Star Stoudemire twice in the same draft in favor of lesser big men.
It's tough to come down too hard on a team for a draft that came less than a year before a championship. And the Pistons very well may not have won the 2004 title if they had picked Bosh instead of Milicic. They probably wouldn't have gone after Rasheed Wallace midseason with Bosh showing strides as a rookie. But they would have been better off for the long run with the future Hall of Famer anchoring their future.
This is one of the most understandable gaffes on this list. Garnett was the first player in more than a decade to go from high school to the draft, and while anyone who watched him knew he was the most talented player in the class, there were very real questions about maturity and preparedness. Smith went from All-American at Maryland to pretty good NBA player.
This one is mostly for sentimental reasons. Drexler was the local star, coming out of the University of Houston, and wound up the best player in his draft class despite falling to the middle of the first round. Also, he wasn't so good as a rookie that he would have interefered with the Rockets landing his former college teammate Hakeem Olajuwon the next year. An Olajuwon-Drexler combination for their full primes instead of their late-career reunion almost certainly would have produced more than one championship.
There's an important piece of background here: Bird was going back for his senior year at Indiana State but was draft eligible because he had been in college for four years. Teams knew that, and he went lower than he should have. But that's no reason for this gaffe from his home-state team. Bird now runs the Pacers and is one of the most popular people in the state of Indiana. Imagine if he'd played his whole Hall of Fame career there? He'd be a shoo-in for governor.
Ferry was the national player of the year (splitting the major awards with No. 3 pick Sean Elliott and No. 6 pick Stacey King). Rice was the national champion. This may have made sense then. But Ferry became a serviceable (and perhaps ahead-of-his-time) stretch-power forward, while Rice was a three-time All-Star and one of the best scorers of his era.
Here's a fascinating conundrum: King, an NBA scoring champion and Hall of Famer, clearly was better than Carr, a journeyman forward who played 10 NBA seasons. But if the Lakers had picked King, they might not have been able to sign Jamaal Wilkes that offseason. And Wilkes was the third-best player on the 1980 NBA championship team and a consumate teammate to the stars. King might have been too score-first to play with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. Lakers fans will live with the result.
The real pain here comes because the Grizzlies' biggest need in 2009 was perimeter scoring. Thabeet never got off the bench behind Marc Gasol, who was beginning his ascent the season before this draft, and quickly was traded and given up on by the NBA. Harden, meanwhile, finished second in MVP voting last season (to another player available with this pick, No. 7 selection Stephen Curry). And the Grizzlies still need perimeter scoring.
What if Dwyane Wade already had Kevin Love? Does the Heat's Big 3 ever form? It's tough to imagine Chris Bosh wanting in on the team if Love was there and beginning to establish himself, so maybe they trade Love. Either way, there are a lot of interesting aspects to this switch, including the idea that maybe Beasley's career would have been helped in a lower-stakes environment such as post-Kevin Garnett Minnesota.
This story of a draft-day trade — Nowitzki and No. 17 pick Pat Garrity for Traylor — comes to a tragic end. "Tractor" Traylor dealt with weight issues that ended his NBA career after seven seasons and left him dead of an apparent heart attack in May 2011 at age 34. About a month later, Nowitzki was named Finals MVP as the Mavericks won their first championship.
This one came up a lot during the past two NBA seasons, when Curry was in the process of winning consecutive MVPs and a championship as the star of two all-time great Warriors teams. Flynn hasn't played an NBA game in more than three years. Making matters worse, the Timberwolves took another point guard, Ricky Rubio, fifth overall. So they passed on Curry twice for two guys who play the same position.
The Pelicans (counting only their history in New Orleans) have had plenty of bad draft selections. But they haven't ever really missed on a star. We mostly are bringing this up because Wright ended up having such a short-lived NBA career while Afflalo would have been a nice fit on a rising team in the Chris Paul era.
Thurmond recorded 14,050 more career rebounds than Heyman. That's a lot. The Hall of Famer out of Bowling Green clearly was the best player in his draft class, while Heyman mostly is known as Duke's first No. 1 pick. But given that the Knicks drafted center Willis Reed the following season, they may be willing to live with this bust.
Given that the Sonics traded for Chambers two years later and made him an integral, All-Star part of their fun late-1980s teams, this makes a lot of sense. Vranes added little to nothing, and the Sonics could have taken further advantage of their early-1980s success with Chambers and young center James Donaldson, whom they traded for Chambers in the end.
The Magic haven't had any egregious misses on stars in the draft, but they did have a worst-case scenario in 2005. Vazquez has never played an NBA game thanks to not wanting to leave Spain. Granger, meanwhile, became an All-Star and 25 points per game scorer before injuries got in the way.
Cousins is a hot name lately because every fan base wants him, but in 2010, Turner was the consensus at No. 2. He was the national player of the year with a well-rounded game that we look back on now to remind us that big, athletic, strong and polished college players tend to beat up on young opponents. Cousins ranks among the very best centers in the NBA.
The 1969 NBA Draft can be summed up as Lew Alcindor and everyone else. But Dandridge, who was drafted by the future Abdul-Jabbar's Bucks, was the clear-cut No. 2. The Suns had four chances to grab him and instead took five players — including twins Floyd and Lloyd Kerr — ahead of him. Three of those guys (Williams and the Kerrs) didn't even play in the NBA.
This story has been rehashed so many times that it is Bowie's defining legacy. But the one thing we need to add is that Clyde Drexler was not a worthwhile factor in passing on Jordan; they could have played together, and Drexler hadn't been that great as a rookie the year before.
Washington had a nondescript five-season career. Dantley is a Hall of Famer and two-time scoring champion who won the Rookie of the Year Award and ended up the best player in the class.
If you're wondering who either of those guys is, that's because the Spurs simply don't miss very often, at least not on the big ones. Tyler had an 11-year career to Sanders' four, and they both are small forwards. But this miss hardly defined the franchise.
A lot of teams missed on Z-Bo, but the Raptors were the most egregious. They needed a power forward and took the one who they thought would be a better fit. Instead, Bradley was out of the NBA after five seasons and even isn't the most famous Michael Bradley in American sports. Randolph's career goes well beyond his two All-Star invites.
The Jazz took the right player. Then they couldn't afford him. Wilkins went on to be a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest scorers the game has ever seen. So they traded him to the Hawks for aging John Drew and washed-up Freeman Williams. Luckily the Jazz made up for it with two of the greatest picks of all time, John Stockton in 1984 and Karl Malone in 1985.
It'd have been nice for Michael Jordan's comeback as a player-general manager to be on a better team. Gasol could have spearheaded that, as he had everything Brown had plus everything Brown offenisvely lacks.
