Yikes! Looking back at the worst drafts in NBA history

Fox Sports and Sports Illustrated have touched on the prevailing feeling that the 2024 NBA Draft class is one of the weakest ever. NBA front offices are hoping that this collection of talent is nowhere near as bad as some of the worst we’ve seen throughout NBA history. We’ll look back at the drafts that are still ridiculed to this day. All statistics are sourced from Basketball Reference.

This draft tends to come up quite a bit as one of the worst in league history. Kenyon Martin went first overall, and had a solid 15-year NBA career, but seemed a bit miscast as the top selection. Still, CBS Sports believes the 2000 Draft was the worst ever by a mile.

Stromile Swift, Darius Miles and Marcus Fizer were selected after Martin, and none of these players amounted to much in the NBA. The Fizer pick was an especially painful one for the Chicago Bulls, who were looking to rebuild their team after the retirement of Michael Jordan in 1998. Yahoo Sports counts Fizer as one of the top five worst picks in Bulls history.

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There were role players in this draft who had some solid careers. Players like Jamal Crawford, Mike Miller, Jamaal Maagloire and Quentin Richardson were taken in the 20s, but their performance wasn’t enough to make up for the blunders at the top.

NBA fans of a more recent generation might not realize how putrid the 1989 edition was. Pervis Ellison was a collegiate star at Louisville, but didn’t amount to much in the NBA. He averaged just over nine points per game for his career. The New York Post includes Ellison as one of the biggest busts of all time.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Los Angeles Clippers selected Danny Ferry with the second overall pick. He never even played for the Clippers, instead spending the first 10 seasons of his career with the Cleveland Cavaliers. At 6’10”, Ferry was a glorified standstill shooter who did not contribute in many other ways on the floor.

Amusingly enough, the Daily Press’ website compared the 2000 draft class at the time it was happening to 1989. They had a feeling that the players taken weren’t going to amount to much.

Sports Illustrated reported that Stephen A. Smith regrets his rant about Kwame Brown, but his frustration with Brown’s play on the floor sums up how disappointing his career was. Brown was infamously drafted first overall by the Washington Wizards to help Michael Jordan who had just come out of retirement.

The Wizards took Brown straight out of high school, thinking he had the tools to be the next great NBA big man. However, according to The Washington Post, Washington had to babysit Brown to coax him through seasons without issue. It was a difficult situation all around.

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Eddie Griffin, DeSagana Diop, and Rodney White went seven through nine, in what was a brutal stretch of picks. In addition, the Boston Celtics took Kedrick Brown at 11, which was arguably an even worse decision.

Readers might be sensing a theme here, as yet another draft from the early 2000s is regarded as one of the worst ever. Yao Ming was a respectable pick at number one, but there were some huge swings and misses right after him.

Nikoloz Tskitishvili was taken by the Denver Nuggets fifth overall, and was overwhelmed from the moment he stepped on the floor. The Georgian prospect is often listed as one of the biggest busts by outlets like The Score and Fox Sports.

The second overall pick in that draft was Jay Williams, who basketball fans are used to seeing on ESPN. Unfortunately, Williams only spent one year in the NBA after he suffered career-ending injuries in a motorcycle accident. It’s possible that he could have been as good as he was hyped up to be coming out of Duke.

Anthony Bennett, Cody Zeller, Alex Len, Ben McLemore and Trey Burke were all top 10 picks in 2013. Zeller and Len have functioned as NBA journeyman centers for the better part of a decade, while McLemore and Burke never really found any sort of rhythm.

Deadspin wrote that Bennett played in the NBA for four teams in four years, without any real hope that he would develop into a worthwhile rotation player. Sporting News wrote a piece in 2017 hoping to explain how executives were so wrong about the UNLV prospect.

Not all was lost, however, as the Milwaukee Bucks took Giannis Antetokounmpo with the 15^th pick. Not many believed the skinny player out of Greece would amount to much, but he’s become one of the best players in the NBA. The BBC’s website profiled his majestic rise.

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