“Dumb” NBA Draft Picks That Turned Out To Be Right

Yes, this is still very early, and a lot can change. However, early returns look promising for the Kings. Everybody thought Jaden Ivey had lead guard upside, whereas Murray was at best a rotation player in waiting. Also, the Kings had nothing going for them and needed an injection of star power.

Well, it turns out the Kings actually had quite a bit going for them — maybe not championship caliber, but certainly playoff caliber. Domantas Sabonis and De’Aaron Fox were and remain a solid one-two punch, and what the Kings really needed was shooting and defense. Enter Murray.

Maybe it’s something about the No. 4 pick. The Raptors were supposed to take Jalen Suggs, the versatile guard and leader of a Gonzaga team that made the National Championship. Here we are a few years later: Barnes is the only first-round pick from 2021 to make an All-Star team.

Now, Suggs has turned into a really good two-way player, and the Magic are a playoff team. The Raptors are not. However, there is not a person on earth who would say Suggs is a better or more valuable player than Barnes.

This was the quintessential boom/bust pick. Brown’s raw athleticism was off the charts, but said rawness was so raw that Paul Hollywood would have stuck his finger into the center of him and then stared blue-steel daggers through the baker who served him Jaylen Brown.

Kris Dunn was the “safe pick.” In 2024 that’s a crazy thing to read because Dunn has peaked as a low-level starter, but that was the thought at the time. The Celtics were smart, though, and took the raw player who wasn’t actually that raw and became All-Star caliber in, like, three years.

Knicks fans booed this pick (idiots). And, you know, was Porzingis ultimately a franchise savior? No, but he’s a really good basketball player and was from the second he stepped on an NBA floor.

Who were the Knicks going to take instead? The next reasonably successful player in that draft order was Myles Turner at No. 11. New York was not drafting Turner — or Devin Booker, who went 13th — at No. 4 overall. Phil Jackson made the right choice here, even if it led to little for the Knicks.

You had to be there. Harden was viewed as skilled player with modest upside and a ton of downside. The pick here was, universally according to pundits, Ricky Rubio. Heck, even Stephen Curry, a swing for the fences in his own right, was a higher-potential pick.

Harden ended up being the second-best player in this draft. It took him leaving the Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook shadow in Oklahoma City, and he never quite eclipsed Curry, but Harden is about as good a No. 3 pick as one can be without being literal Michael Jordan.

To break it down as simply as possible, the Clippers version of Westbrook is the UPSIDE that some (not Hubert Davis, clearly, but many others) were excited for him to reach: A high-energy, slightly crazy, do-it-all ball handler who would attack with reckless abandon. Maybe 20 minutes of really fun hooping a game, and a couple of Sixth Man of the Year awards and a trip to the Finals as a bench player.

Little did we know that his attacking style would work as a starter, a No. 2 on a Finals team, then a No. 1 on a playoff team and ultimately an NBA MVP. Now he’s one of the more fun, albeit frustrating, players to look back on, and he’s a lock Hall of Famer.

Here me out: If the Pistons drafted Carmelo Anthony like they should have in 2003, would they have won the 2004 NBA Finals?

That’s a genuine question. I think Anthony would have been chucking too much for Chauncey Billups‘ and Richard Hamilton‘s liking, and the team built entirely on defense and chemistry would have been ruined. Darko Milicic riding the bench like a team player was the exact right pick for that collection of Pistons. I will die on this hill.