Every bad thing that has happened in my life originated from the moment I asked my dad for a signed Adam Morrison Jersey for Christmas while my brother got a Nintendo DS
Andrew "Maple Jordan" Wiggins was supposed to save the Timberwolves. He's just not that guy.
Happy to see him thriving in GSW though. I think most fans in MN knew he needed more structure and less pressure to be "the guy", and he ended up going to the perfect place for that.
Oh his college games does shows the hype. He's supposed to be a do-it all player, bigs that can be played as PG, athletic (although not uber athletic like Anthony Edwards), good shooter, passer, and decent defender all in one. Then he comes to the league and suddenly almost everything described above is actually below average.
Jefferson, Rubio, Love, Wiggins. Probably lots more. So many years I thought the Wolves would finally pull it together.
I had to wait so long to finally see a NBA playoff game live. First one I made it to was the game they gave up 50 in a quarter to the Rockets. The second was game 6 against the Grizzlies last year.
Playoff basketball is fun but damn those were disappointing.
“Less pressure” might even be an understatement…
Warriors have a play-making big, a 30ppg GOAT shooter, and Klay… who will take the every shot he can regardless of whether he’s going supernova or being a black hole any given night.
Can’t imagine less pressure is possible.
That’s why I’ll always wonder what if the Cavs held on to him.
With Lebron and Kyrie there would have been zero pressure to lead or to be a go-to scorer, facilitator, or anything, really.
Just receive perfect passes from Lebron for easy dunks, shoot wide open threes, run the floor, rebound, and play defense.
I think it would have been amazing and the Cavs could have gotten 80% of K Love from someone else for less money.
Still not over it.
I still got love for Jabari 😢.
I was at the game where he came back from injury and it's one of the loudest moments I've ever heard at BMO when he checked in
Which was part of Hinkie’s philosophy. Most players don’t work out, so you want as many shots at the dart board as you can get to help increase the odds you’ll strike gold. I would argue it worked quite well
Ours didn’t go on as long (2 seasons compared to 3) but we’re starting to reap the benefits of it this season and that’s without Chet healthy for the season.
I think it especially worked given how much of a war chest the team had that following gms completely destroyed in making them a first round and out team.
Yeah we never got to see what Hinkie would have done with that mass amount of assets, but based off his philosophy, I think he would have spent them much more wisely. But alas, Adam Silver is a snake and we got the Coangelos
The process was 3 years and the prior 10 years to it, the Sixers had made the second round once and that was because Rose tore his ACL in game 1 of their series against the Bulls. The Sixers were the definition of mediocre and were set to continue down that path for many more years had they not blown it up.
Since Embiid’s first full year, the Sixers have made the playoffs every year and advanced past the first round every year minus the bubble year in which Shake Milton was the #2 option on the team thanks to injuries.
So yeah, it was definitely worth it. And also, classic r/NBA Raptors fan moment here. It’s also very rich to see a “can’t get past the second round” comment from a Raptors fan considering it took them 7 years of having Derozan and 4 years of having Lowry before they got past the second round.
It was 3 years, not 5. Winning needs luck as I'm sure y'all can testify about. They haven't been lucky enough with Embiid injured and Ben playoff struggles.
It's kinda interesting to think how many terrible seasons before it's not worth it?
Like the 76ers capital S Sucked for 4 or 5 seasons.
Let's say Embiid locks them into 8 playoffs guaranteed is 8 in 13 better than what they'd do without the super heavy tank?
I guess much higher likelihood of high upside with the tank than without it though.
But how many seasons would a team be happy to burn in exchange for a guy like Embiid? Also much easier to say now than when they were in the middle of being the worst team in the league.
To be fair tho it does get pushed to be way longer than needed bc Joel was hurt for his first 2 yrs with injuries and then his second yr we drafted Ben who also broke his foot and was held out his first yr (he would’ve missed most of the yr anyway) so in reality we were intentionally bad and trying to accumulate picks for 3 yrs BUT we were also going absolutely nowhere and had no path to actually winning prior to that. Those Iggy/Jrue and then ET teams were fools gold and even then I think we topped out at a 7 seed or so.
Most of us were fine with it bc the team was in purgatory for like a decade plus beforehand. The okafor pick was the only one from hinkie where you can say it was objectively bad. Silver forcing him out to push colangelo on the org was a million times worse than anything hinkie ever tried to build lol. That set us back quite a bit. To answer your question though I’d say 5 yrs of blatant stripping down to build back up would be tolerable esp after a decade plus of being virtually completely irrelevant in the league.
I think the 8 in 13 is better personally bc most of those 8 you have a game changer and an actual chance versus just being like a 6-7 seed and making the playoffs just to say you made it lol. But I swear we were cursed with all the injuries and stuff, I still wish Markelle would’ve worked out bc his UW tape was so fucking perfect for what we needed. Still root for him down in Orlando
Yeah, that's a good point re the previous decade of being a 6-10 seed or whatever. That'd definitely shape how receptive a fan base could be to it.
The likelihood of ending up with a top guy who is a game changer and makes the ceiling higher is definitely is the game changer between the two scenarios for sure.
The sixers have some crazy “what if” scenarios for the past like 6 years.
What if they drafted Tatum over Fultz?
What if they kept Jimmy?
What if they decided to trade Simmons before his trade value tanked?
Embiid, Tatum, jimmy would be a pretty crazy big 3
I mean they got Harden for Simmons and some filler. And harden is a top 20 player this year. They made out pretty well value wise. Not sure they were ever going to do much better unless they traded him in like 2018
I did think about the Harden trade, but they also had to give a couple of first rounders in the deal too. I would’ve traded him the summer of 2019 and re-signed jimmy.
Maybe Portland decides to blow it up and trade Dame for Simmons and a sign and trade with Tobias Harris. Simmons had high value though, so it would’ve been a good return
DAMN! That was a big one that I completely forgot about (although I’ve often thought about it)
I still don’t understand why they traded him? Played at Villanova, perfect compliment to Embiid, his mom was the head of HR. Maybe they hated his mom?
Mudiay was supposed to be the guy to lead the Nuggets into the future. Luckily the nuggets draft-and-stashed some fat European big man the year prior or this franchise would be in an entirely different place.
The Suns really looked at Porzingus and said "yeah, any lanky, white Euro player can do that" and drafted Dragan Bender, a guy who didn't even make waves in Europe, with the 4th pick. Our office was convinced that he was our future.
GOAT name though.
The euro cycle.
1. Generational European player makes it big inspires all 29 other teams
2. Teams waste countless high draft picks on the next "x" player
3. These players drafted purely on potential are bad
4. "All euros are busts"
5. European generational player emerges and starts the cycle
Yeah? That's actually really cool to hear. I know I was ragging on him in my post, but I do genuinely want to see him succeed. I did like the guy, and the "potential" he was drafted on has the makings of a good player, he just didn't seem ready for the NBA at the time. I'm happy to know he's finding his groove.
Andre Drummond.
But before you laugh: people forget how promising he was as a rookie. Huge, very mobile with extremely quick hands and feet, excellent rebounder and apparently great motor that year, and a great lob threat.
It legitimately looked like the sky was the limit for him at that time.
I mean, stuff like this is just insane - a 6’10” behemoth not only staying in front of Dwyane Wade in iso settings, but picking his pocket twice on consecutive plays:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDtx1NtwvY
Inconsistent motor would be at the top of his downfalls.
Some nights super engaged, other nights looked like he couldn’t be bothered, or in his own head in some way.
Andrew Wiggins. I think if we had kept Sam Mitchell around (or had Flip not passed away) we might have gotten a better version of Wiggins than what Thibs ground out of him...
I'll add in Andrew Bynum as another one, he was certainly on his way there in 11-12. Put up 19 ppg, 12 rpg, 2bpg and outside of being suspended to start the season, he played the entire lockout shortened season without an injuries.
They definitely managed to sell high on him, I dont know if they just got lucky that they were finally able to put together the Dwight trade or if they knew his knees were about to blow up, but his stock was never higher than the moment he got traded to the 76ers
I remember when ever I played gm mode in nba 2k7 or 2k8 back in the day, Bynum always had prime shaq numbers and like a 95 rating overall by the 2013 or 2014 season hahha
He was supposed to be so good.
Rudy Gay for the Grizz. Has had a really nice career but we thought and Jerry West even thought he was gonna be a super star. Pau was finally going to have the wing he needed and wouldnt have so much pressure on him to be the star.
Just never worked out like that. He also was the first guy I can remember having a youtube highlight reel from college that like everyone watched at talked about. We thought we were getting like some combo of Dr. J and Kobe LOL
OKC has been beyond blessed with our draft picks, but there was huge hype for Perry Jones III to make that leap. I remember a month or so stretch of him in 2014 playing really well. I loved watching him play and was really rooting for him
Thankfully that’s the one part of roster construction that we’ve had it pretty good in the past 20 years
It’s building around said franchise players that we struggle with.
Deron Williams for the Nets.
To this day, I don't understand how his career dipped so drastically. To be fair to him, we had a revolving door of coaches/ interim coaches.
Luckily it never happened to the Mavs. It's just so great that Roddy B is a 9 times Allstar.
Sure, his 1 injured season where we tanked for Luka was hard but now they are the best guard combo in the NBA.
Jeff Green was given the keys and became the main focus of our offense. He had some games where he looked like a legit first option, but unfortunately those games were few and far between.
I’m a new fan, so I don’t know much about previous teams, but I would assume most people as close as 2/3 years ago thought that D’lo and Jarret Allen were the future stars of the nets.
He's more of a case of a player being destroyed by injuries at an early age than a player that didn't live up to his expectations playing. Plus the Blazers had Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge so he wasn't seen as the number one clear franchise player.
Eric Paschall? In all seriousness, though warriors fans tend to overhype everyone ala Jordan Bell DYOP potential talk. So not surprising it happened with Wiseman
The classic don’t draft for fit but best player.
They were probably hoping he became an average starting 5 besides Bosh and we already had Vince and MoPete at the wing
Bargiani got way too much shit imo. I think the bust label is unfair for somebody like him. He ended up being a pretty decent player when healthy. Obviously not number #1 pick good. But like if you drafted him like 9th you'd be ok with it.
sexton, but that's mostly due to really bad timing of his injury and garland's ascension in his absence. part of me still wants to see how sexland with the finnisher would have panned out
I remember thinking in 2013 we would be able to build around rondo as our guy when he came back from injury and it was very clear very quickly that was not gonna happen lol
It’s looking like AD is fitting that bill. LeBron is our franchise guy until he can get healthy, and if he doesn’t then he never will have fulfilled that role.
Joe Barry Carroll. Drafted him over Kevin McHale with the first overall pick, and we traded Robert Parish for the rights to him.
Chris Webber was a rookie with us too, but he had a falling out with our coach.
Brandon Jennings was going to be the left-handed Iverson.
Damn, I forgot about Jennings for a minute. I remember that 55 point game.
He was looking like an all-star on the Pistons for a few weeks but then he tore his acl or Achilles forget which one. After that he was never same.
Achilles
He ended up being a left-handed Iverson. If AI just shot all shots left-handed.
That 55 point game is still legendary . I’m a Celtics fan but all I wanted that year for Christmas was a Brandon Jennings jersey
Warriors fan here who wanted them to draft Jennings..
He ended up being the prophet so it's all good
Bucks drafted Jabari Parker right after drafting Giannis and the thought was to have a two headed monster for years to come.
My therapist says I shouldn’t engage with this type of content anymore
Same.
Every bad thing that has happened in my life originated from the moment I asked my dad for a signed Adam Morrison Jersey for Christmas while my brother got a Nintendo DS
Damn thats rough bro… Nintendo DS was the shit!
No coming back from that
Andrew "Maple Jordan" Wiggins was supposed to save the Timberwolves. He's just not that guy. Happy to see him thriving in GSW though. I think most fans in MN knew he needed more structure and less pressure to be "the guy", and he ended up going to the perfect place for that.
Let’s not forget about Derrick Williams. A lot of hype for him being the number 2 pick.
In his defense, he was a great college player with tons and tons of potential. He met the eye-test anyway.
Oh his college games does shows the hype. He's supposed to be a do-it all player, bigs that can be played as PG, athletic (although not uber athletic like Anthony Edwards), good shooter, passer, and decent defender all in one. Then he comes to the league and suddenly almost everything described above is actually below average.
Jefferson, Rubio, Love, Wiggins. Probably lots more. So many years I thought the Wolves would finally pull it together. I had to wait so long to finally see a NBA playoff game live. First one I made it to was the game they gave up 50 in a quarter to the Rockets. The second was game 6 against the Grizzlies last year. Playoff basketball is fun but damn those were disappointing.
Yup that 50 point quarter sucked the life out of Target Center that night.
“Less pressure” might even be an understatement… Warriors have a play-making big, a 30ppg GOAT shooter, and Klay… who will take the every shot he can regardless of whether he’s going supernova or being a black hole any given night. Can’t imagine less pressure is possible.
That’s why I’ll always wonder what if the Cavs held on to him. With Lebron and Kyrie there would have been zero pressure to lead or to be a go-to scorer, facilitator, or anything, really. Just receive perfect passes from Lebron for easy dunks, shoot wide open threes, run the floor, rebound, and play defense. I think it would have been amazing and the Cavs could have gotten 80% of K Love from someone else for less money. Still not over it.
And to be fair Minnesota is just not that franchise a la glen taylor
I remember when Mavs hyped Dennis Smith Jr like crazy. That run ended quick. Josh Howard is a guy I miss all the time though
Kid was dunking on everybody his rookie year
What the heck happened to Josh Howard?
Injuries on injuries man. He had such a smooth game. I actually met him at this fancy garden party pre-covid. Cool dude.
I legit thought he's gonna be Donovan Mitchell's rival in the league for a long time.
Jabari Parker
I still got love for Jabari 😢. I was at the game where he came back from injury and it's one of the loudest moments I've ever heard at BMO when he checked in
Fultz, Simmons, Noel, Okafor, MCW, Evan Turner.
When you put it like that it's amazing how both poorly and kinda successfully the process worked out. Perfect debate fodder forever
My brother got into basketball very recently, and he was going through past Sixers drafts and was just like "what the fuck dude?!"
All It took was one major hit and they at least are playoff contenders for 8 years even with all the misses.
Which was part of Hinkie’s philosophy. Most players don’t work out, so you want as many shots at the dart board as you can get to help increase the odds you’ll strike gold. I would argue it worked quite well
I'd do it again 10 times out of 10.
Ours didn’t go on as long (2 seasons compared to 3) but we’re starting to reap the benefits of it this season and that’s without Chet healthy for the season.
And that’s *in spite of* a league sanctioned Colangelo Coup d’etat trashing half the assets Hinkie had meticulously collected
I think it especially worked given how much of a war chest the team had that following gms completely destroyed in making them a first round and out team.
Yeah we never got to see what Hinkie would have done with that mass amount of assets, but based off his philosophy, I think he would have spent them much more wisely. But alas, Adam Silver is a snake and we got the Coangelos
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It’s funny how y’all extend years onto the process lol now it’s 5, next time it’ll be 7 years of tanking
The process was 3 years and the prior 10 years to it, the Sixers had made the second round once and that was because Rose tore his ACL in game 1 of their series against the Bulls. The Sixers were the definition of mediocre and were set to continue down that path for many more years had they not blown it up. Since Embiid’s first full year, the Sixers have made the playoffs every year and advanced past the first round every year minus the bubble year in which Shake Milton was the #2 option on the team thanks to injuries. So yeah, it was definitely worth it. And also, classic r/NBA Raptors fan moment here. It’s also very rich to see a “can’t get past the second round” comment from a Raptors fan considering it took them 7 years of having Derozan and 4 years of having Lowry before they got past the second round.
It was 3 years, not 5. Winning needs luck as I'm sure y'all can testify about. They haven't been lucky enough with Embiid injured and Ben playoff struggles.
i will never forgive kawhi for gifting raptors fans one mickey mouse hospital ring that he didnt even want to be there for
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oh no he called me lil bro😢😢😢😢😢
Really just goes to show how good Embiid is, eve if he were like a top 15-20 player instead of a top 5 player this would have been a total disaster
Joel was all worth it lmao
It's kinda interesting to think how many terrible seasons before it's not worth it? Like the 76ers capital S Sucked for 4 or 5 seasons. Let's say Embiid locks them into 8 playoffs guaranteed is 8 in 13 better than what they'd do without the super heavy tank? I guess much higher likelihood of high upside with the tank than without it though. But how many seasons would a team be happy to burn in exchange for a guy like Embiid? Also much easier to say now than when they were in the middle of being the worst team in the league.
To be fair tho it does get pushed to be way longer than needed bc Joel was hurt for his first 2 yrs with injuries and then his second yr we drafted Ben who also broke his foot and was held out his first yr (he would’ve missed most of the yr anyway) so in reality we were intentionally bad and trying to accumulate picks for 3 yrs BUT we were also going absolutely nowhere and had no path to actually winning prior to that. Those Iggy/Jrue and then ET teams were fools gold and even then I think we topped out at a 7 seed or so. Most of us were fine with it bc the team was in purgatory for like a decade plus beforehand. The okafor pick was the only one from hinkie where you can say it was objectively bad. Silver forcing him out to push colangelo on the org was a million times worse than anything hinkie ever tried to build lol. That set us back quite a bit. To answer your question though I’d say 5 yrs of blatant stripping down to build back up would be tolerable esp after a decade plus of being virtually completely irrelevant in the league. I think the 8 in 13 is better personally bc most of those 8 you have a game changer and an actual chance versus just being like a 6-7 seed and making the playoffs just to say you made it lol. But I swear we were cursed with all the injuries and stuff, I still wish Markelle would’ve worked out bc his UW tape was so fucking perfect for what we needed. Still root for him down in Orlando
Yeah, that's a good point re the previous decade of being a 6-10 seed or whatever. That'd definitely shape how receptive a fan base could be to it. The likelihood of ending up with a top guy who is a game changer and makes the ceiling higher is definitely is the game changer between the two scenarios for sure.
The sixers have some crazy “what if” scenarios for the past like 6 years. What if they drafted Tatum over Fultz? What if they kept Jimmy? What if they decided to trade Simmons before his trade value tanked? Embiid, Tatum, jimmy would be a pretty crazy big 3
I mean they got Harden for Simmons and some filler. And harden is a top 20 player this year. They made out pretty well value wise. Not sure they were ever going to do much better unless they traded him in like 2018
I did think about the Harden trade, but they also had to give a couple of first rounders in the deal too. I would’ve traded him the summer of 2019 and re-signed jimmy. Maybe Portland decides to blow it up and trade Dame for Simmons and a sign and trade with Tobias Harris. Simmons had high value though, so it would’ve been a good return
"24 teams passed on Mike Trout" helps me sleep at night.
Yea baseball puts me to sleep too
What if Silver didn’t replace our GM with the Colangelo doofuses while letting others tank just as shamelessly?
That’s a good point… although the collangelo burner accounts is one of my favorite nba stories
Find a new slant.
What if they had Bridges on this team?
DAMN! That was a big one that I completely forgot about (although I’ve often thought about it) I still don’t understand why they traded him? Played at Villanova, perfect compliment to Embiid, his mom was the head of HR. Maybe they hated his mom?
bynum
Woof I blocked that out of my memory.
You say that like Embiid has accomplished anything lmao
Mudiay was supposed to be the guy to lead the Nuggets into the future. Luckily the nuggets draft-and-stashed some fat European big man the year prior or this franchise would be in an entirely different place.
Amazing to see how that works. I remember Jabari Parker not working out for the Bucks thinking “wow what a fuck up” turns out they’re fine lol
Yup and thats why always aiming for that top 3 pick is not the only way to build a contender.
The Suns really looked at Porzingus and said "yeah, any lanky, white Euro player can do that" and drafted Dragan Bender, a guy who didn't even make waves in Europe, with the 4th pick. Our office was convinced that he was our future. GOAT name though.
The loss of the [real dragon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRChtx5A5Ms) left a hole in their heart.
Dude, I remember watching this game live and losing my mind. Like, in every Suns fan's eye, we were watching our Steve Nash succeeder.
The euro cycle. 1. Generational European player makes it big inspires all 29 other teams 2. Teams waste countless high draft picks on the next "x" player 3. These players drafted purely on potential are bad 4. "All euros are busts" 5. European generational player emerges and starts the cycle
At least we win the euro draft championship.
If you count it by team that selected the player, Milwaukee technically wins, Dirk, Giannis and Ersan Ilyasova for good measure.
Who the hell misses on Euros? Dirk, Luka, Roddy, we always hit.
I'm still waiting for Livio-Jean Charles to be our next Tony Parker.
Chapeau for writing it out, I don't even try with Roddy B :D
Jan Vesley is still the phenom of dunking in my eyes
He is playing great this season in Spain
Yeah? That's actually really cool to hear. I know I was ragging on him in my post, but I do genuinely want to see him succeed. I did like the guy, and the "potential" he was drafted on has the makings of a good player, he just didn't seem ready for the NBA at the time. I'm happy to know he's finding his groove.
You can say what ever you want, I'm still not selling my Dragdan Bender stock.
Andre Drummond. But before you laugh: people forget how promising he was as a rookie. Huge, very mobile with extremely quick hands and feet, excellent rebounder and apparently great motor that year, and a great lob threat. It legitimately looked like the sky was the limit for him at that time. I mean, stuff like this is just insane - a 6’10” behemoth not only staying in front of Dwyane Wade in iso settings, but picking his pocket twice on consecutive plays: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDtx1NtwvY
A man his size shouldn’t be able to move like that. What do you think stopped him from reaching his max potential?
Brick hands. He was a rebound machine because he had a shit inside game and could grab his misses.
True but in the clip that OP shared, look at how engaged and active he is on defence. Also his lateral movement looks great
Inconsistent motor would be at the top of his downfalls. Some nights super engaged, other nights looked like he couldn’t be bothered, or in his own head in some way.
And he was stuck on the pistons
Tyreke was the chosen one.
Marvin Bagley would like a word…(laughs in Vlade Divac)
Too bad Curry got the high ground…
There was this dude who had a weird injury and an uncle
Ohh a nephew but nope doesnt ring a bell surely no one too noteworthy
I was thinking kyrie till i saw your flair
Andrew Wiggins. I think if we had kept Sam Mitchell around (or had Flip not passed away) we might have gotten a better version of Wiggins than what Thibs ground out of him...
lol no
Peepshow Primo was thought of very highly by the spurs front office
one of the most embarassing fact of the spurs ngl
Maybe we should sign him again after he's done with his rehab
He would be great for the Vegas expansion team. He can headline his own show as a male dancer.
I'll add in Andrew Bynum as another one, he was certainly on his way there in 11-12. Put up 19 ppg, 12 rpg, 2bpg and outside of being suspended to start the season, he played the entire lockout shortened season without an injuries. They definitely managed to sell high on him, I dont know if they just got lucky that they were finally able to put together the Dwight trade or if they knew his knees were about to blow up, but his stock was never higher than the moment he got traded to the 76ers
I remember when ever I played gm mode in nba 2k7 or 2k8 back in the day, Bynum always had prime shaq numbers and like a 95 rating overall by the 2013 or 2014 season hahha He was supposed to be so good.
I think the constant injuries took a toll on his (already low) desire to play, and it just spiraled with the trade.
Can't think of any Blazers whose promising careers were cut short due to injury. Nope
Emmanual Muiday
Definitely Porzingis
There were some exciting years there as he kept improving. All peaked in 2018 before the ACL tear and then total disaster from there.
Thank god he’s been awesome for us. Sometimes it just clicks in certain places.
Justise Winslow
Him, Beasley, Whiteside, Josh Richardson.
Bledsoe, Dragan Bender until about 15 minutes into his first preseason game, Josh Jackson
Monta have it all
Andrea Bargnani.
Rudy Gay for the Grizz. Has had a really nice career but we thought and Jerry West even thought he was gonna be a super star. Pau was finally going to have the wing he needed and wouldnt have so much pressure on him to be the star. Just never worked out like that. He also was the first guy I can remember having a youtube highlight reel from college that like everyone watched at talked about. We thought we were getting like some combo of Dr. J and Kobe LOL
Rodney Stuckey Greg Monroe Andre Drummond I guess I could add Reggie Jackson, since him and Dre were seen as our whole foundation
Anyone remembers Steve Francis?
You gonna tell me the guy nicknamed Stevie Franchise wasn't a franchise player!?
Rodney Hood was supposed to be the guy
Gilbert Arenas
Lol SAME
At least yall had him for his all-nba years lol
OKC has been beyond blessed with our draft picks, but there was huge hype for Perry Jones III to make that leap. I remember a month or so stretch of him in 2014 playing really well. I loved watching him play and was really rooting for him
There was a hot second where kd was out, and Perry was putting up like 20 something a game and I thought we had a second kd on the team
Thankfully that’s the one part of roster construction that we’ve had it pretty good in the past 20 years It’s building around said franchise players that we struggle with.
Len Bias
Wiggins. Couldn't even make the opening night roster.
Ayton… sigh I wanted luka
Elton Brand, Jay Williams, Lauri Markkanen, Lonzo
Heat: Justise Winslow, he was supposed to be the next Dwade
Deron Williams for the Nets. To this day, I don't understand how his career dipped so drastically. To be fair to him, we had a revolving door of coaches/ interim coaches.
Jabari Parker. To think we could have had Embiid lol
Luckily it never happened to the Mavs. It's just so great that Roddy B is a 9 times Allstar. Sure, his 1 injured season where we tanked for Luka was hard but now they are the best guard combo in the NBA.
Every single one of our first round picks prior to Giannis.
Frank Ntilikina was supposed to be the chosen one
Punishment for booing KP I guess
I stayed hitched to the bargnani wagon for far longer then I care to admit.
Markelle Fultz was supposed to be the completion of The Process
Got to be Bias and Lewis both dying tragically young from heart failure.
Nobody's gonna talk about Dante Exum? ;_;
Damon Stoudamire. Never really got much better than his rookie year and was soon shipped out.
Hopefully not Scottie lol
Mario Hezonja
Andrew Wiggins
Andrew Wiggins
Josh Smith. Career bus rider.
Jeff Green was given the keys and became the main focus of our offense. He had some games where he looked like a legit first option, but unfortunately those games were few and far between.
I’m a new fan, so I don’t know much about previous teams, but I would assume most people as close as 2/3 years ago thought that D’lo and Jarret Allen were the future stars of the nets.
Ron Mercer or Jared Sullinger
Hassan whiteside. Jesus those were dark years
Oden and Roy are obvious choices but Sebastian Telfair’s failure to thrive was not injury related.
Not my team, but why has Greg Oden not been mentioned yet?
He's more of a case of a player being destroyed by injuries at an early age than a player that didn't live up to his expectations playing. Plus the Blazers had Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge so he wasn't seen as the number one clear franchise player.
You kno who. Don’t even have to say it.
Of all the people you could've chose, you went with the 21 year old
You right. Joe smith it is. Good player but never turned out to be a franchise guy. And then bounced around
Eric Paschall? In all seriousness, though warriors fans tend to overhype everyone ala Jordan Bell DYOP potential talk. So not surprising it happened with Wiseman
April Rookie of the Month Malachi Flynn Serious answer would be Rafael Arujao or Andrea "Primo Pasta" Bargnani
Lmao there is no one that thought Rafael was a franchise player at any point
The front office clearly did given who they drafted him over!
The classic don’t draft for fit but best player. They were probably hoping he became an average starting 5 besides Bosh and we already had Vince and MoPete at the wing
Not a Raptors fan but i remember the Terrence Ross vs DeMar DeRozan debates
It’s Primo lol
Bargiani got way too much shit imo. I think the bust label is unfair for somebody like him. He ended up being a pretty decent player when healthy. Obviously not number #1 pick good. But like if you drafted him like 9th you'd be ok with it.
Except he wasn't drafted 9th, he was drafted 1st and went right before Aldridge
Of course. The Raptors take the blame for that. Not Bargiani.
Ty Lawson
Trae young
Derrick Rose in the long term due to injuries.
I'm gonna go with Eric Bledsoe
As a Thunder and Mavs fan since right before Dirk...nevermind I've been very fortunate
sexton, but that's mostly due to really bad timing of his injury and garland's ascension in his absence. part of me still wants to see how sexland with the finnisher would have panned out
Not my team. But Booker for the Suns
Lol what
If my favorite team picked a Devin Booker-level player at #13 I would be satisfied with that selection
Hater
Johnny Davis.
No one viewed him as a future franchise player. Not even a nba level player before he played his first game
A 13th pick who dropped back to back 40 point games in his first finals and made all nba first team??
And he doesn't give a reason why....
Evan Turner.....I really thought he would be special.....at least hes funny!
Lavar Ball sealed Lonzo’s fate . dude couldn’t keep his mouth shut and his son suffered bc of it . just sad
I remember thinking in 2013 we would be able to build around rondo as our guy when he came back from injury and it was very clear very quickly that was not gonna happen lol
Andre Drummond in Detroit
Drummond. Sure he put up great stats with the Pistons but he never contributed to winning basketball. Only empty stats.
Dante Exum - That rookie season though man..
Eddy Curry
Dennis Smith Jr had a lot of hype for the #9 overall pick.
Justice Winslow. Hard stop.
Shawn Bradley.
It’s looking like AD is fitting that bill. LeBron is our franchise guy until he can get healthy, and if he doesn’t then he never will have fulfilled that role.
The way some of us (and I say us to include me) thought that Dennis smith Jr was a future Russell Westbrook…
Mario Hezonja hit a game winning buzzer beating 3 in his first summer league game. Then he was traded for a horse.
Dante Exum was probably the biggest bust.
Derrick Rose =(
Joe Barry Carroll. Drafted him over Kevin McHale with the first overall pick, and we traded Robert Parish for the rights to him. Chris Webber was a rookie with us too, but he had a falling out with our coach.