Biggest surprise bust ever?

[moistnessfiscal]

Dante Exum

[Curmudgeon]

Greg Oden. Bias shouldn't count because he never played.

[DimesandKnicks]

Lonzo

A bit early for that

Can someone explain the Lonzo Hate to me? He has awful shooting splits and has been injured but the man is a 6'6 point guard whose averged 10 6 and 6 over his career.

[madmaxmedia]

Ovinton J'Anthony Mayo

Good call and I agree, but in hindsight he was just overhyped. I think he was old for a freshman (20 years old?) in college. He was under 6'4" w/o shoes, so on the short side for an NBA SG and really wasn't all that athletic.

What can you say, his hairline had us all fooled...

[Bologna Smasher]

A lot of these guys aren't full blown busts, but players I was really high on and thought would be a lot better than what we really got.

Andrew Bogut - Thought he could've been the next Tim Duncan
Jeff Green - Saw him as a Lamar Odom clone, but better scoring and brain
Acie Law - Chauncey Billups potential
Jerryd Bayless - Something like what we got from young Derrick Rose
Jason Thompson - Rasheed Wallace
Earl Clark - Another guy similar to Odom
Evan Turner - Something like young Grant Hill
Greg Monroe - Chris Webber
Brandon Knight - Better version of Jason Terry
Chris Singleton - Prime Gerald Wallace
Nolan Smith - Another Chauncey Billups type
Kenneth Faried - He's kind of similar to how I expected, but thought he would've turned into a good defensive player
Trey Burke - Next Chris Paul
Elfrid Payton - Thought he would've been Rajon Rondo with better scoring potential
Jahlil Okafor - Similar to DeMarcus Cousins
Stanley Johnson - Ron Artest
Cameron Payne - Thought he had the potential to be the best point guard in that draft
Kris Dunn - Saw him as a surefire superstar, a Derrick Rose/Chris Paul hybrid. Really wanted the Kings to move up to pick him once he slipped a bit

Dude where'd u get these awful comps from burke was nothing like paul okfor nothing like cousins and the monroe webber comp is absurd as is the Thompson sheed

I'm not saying they were copies of those players or had they exact same skill sets, just the sort of base of a player they could mold themselves into coming out of college if they worked hard enough.

[Moahst]

Zhou Qi. Seemed like a surefire HOF guy.

[mplsfonz23]

I hope someone brought up Michael Olowokandi. When he was with Minnesota, he wouldn't even shower because he was running to the bar across the street. I heard he would down a six pack before games.

I also think Sam Bowie just because he was picked ahead of Jordan.

[jg77]

Not a bust but I thought Shane Battier would've been a much a better scorer than he was.

[dc]

I read a quote back in the day that people thought his ceiling was best player in the league and, possibly, one of the best ever.

C-Webb never had a 'one of the GOATs' ceiling.

That's the first I ever heard of that. That's the kind of stuff that comes from dad's and middle school coaches. I guess that's a first for everything. CBSSportsline once pegged Terence Morris from Maryland as the #1 pick in the 1999 draft at the beginning of the college season. Morris ended up going in the 2nd round.

I mean, the guy went #5 overall in the draft and, outside of Donyell Marshall to the T-Wolves, I didn't hear anyone saying the teams drafting ahead of that should've taken Howard. Howard was a 6'9" PF with pretty decent post skills and average athletically. That never screamed GOAT to me.

Webber was hands down the #1 HS recruit in the country when the Fab 5 formed. Howard was never a better player at Michigan and never thought to have more upside.

[Jabroni Lames]

Not sure if this guy was mentioned already, but Sebastian Telfair was hyped right up there with Lebron as the "Can't Miss Kid"

[dc]

Glenn Robinson was a surprise bust/disappointment. I know it's strange to say that of a 2 time all-star, but consider that he was basically the consensus #1 overall pick in a draft with Kidd and Grant Hill taken after him. He had some good years with the Bucks, but he ended up being a journeyman by the time he hit his late 20s. That's a big disappointment considering his draft hype what people expected of him.

Remember SportsCenter during his Purdue years having his highlights on every night. He was hyped up a little, but you get that when you average 30 pts in college. He was a good player, he just wasn't better than Hill or Kidd and that question was debated even then. I wouldn't call Robinson a bust by any means, but I'd like to know what specifically he was doing to make MIL prefer him over Hill or Kidd's games. Maybe a 40sthg Bucks fan can answer that one. That is the franchise that swiped Coach Dunleavy from the Lakers and overpaid him heavily to sign with them, so they were in the habit of purposely choosing mediocrity maybe. Hill was known as the all-around best player in 94, too. It's not like they had to discover that after the fact. Kidd was obviously a top notch passer/PG. He's still the best passing college prospect, btw. No one has touched him since. Don't tell me about Lonzo either.''

You have to recall a couple things about that era of basketball:
1. college performance really mattered
2. NBA wasn't the guard heavy league that it now is.

Robinson was absolutely dominant at Purdue. He was a one man team that carried an otherwise pretty lame Purdue roster. He pretty much single handidly beat a very good/deep Kansas team in the semi-final. Grant Hill was just thought of as a really talented guy scoring 17-18ppg who wasn't required to do as much playing for a team a program as good as Duke.

Kidd was a PG. He was very highly thought of, but the thought back then was you can never win building around a PG not named Magic (who was a 6'9" PG). And of course teams were concerned about his poor shooting ability.

Robinson wasn't thought of as much of a playmaker in college, but remember this was the peak era of 90s isolation basketball with zone defenses not being allowed and such, and he was clearly the most dominant ISO scorer in college.

[JAYZGOAT]

Not sure if this guy was mentioned already, but Sebastian Telfair was hyped right up there with Lebron as the "Can't Miss Kid"

Man do I miss the days when magazines were legit entertainment. I would go to the Turkey Hill down the block and spend my allowance money on overpriced basketball magazines.

[bdp31770]

I don't think anyones mentioned Chris Washburn yet. Drafted #3 in the mid-eighties but only averaged a couple points and rebounds before being out of the league in just a few years. Part of that was due to injuries but he also made a lot of bad decisions along the way.

[dc]

I don't think anyones mentioned Chris Washburn yet. Drafted #3 in the mid-eighties but only averaged a couple points and rebounds before being out of the league in just a few years. Part of that was due to injuries but he also made a lot of bad decisions along the way.

Guy just wasn't into it mentally. Word is that during timeouts, he wouldn't even be listening to what the coaches were drawing up and would instead just be staring at the dance team.

[dc]

Kwame Brown, Eddy Curry, Jay Williams, Andrea Barnagni, Greg Oden, Yi Jianlian, Joe Alexander, Hasheem Thabeet, Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker.

-I thought Kwame was a sure bet. 6'11", big bodied and mobile. Looked like the best player in the McD's All American game. I thought similarly of Jay Williams as well given his production in college, but he under performed his rookie year, and then he had the motorcycle accident.

-I never saw Joe Alexander, Anthony Bennett or Bargnani as sure bets by any stretch. With Bargnani, I just kept getting Danny Ferry flashbacks. Most people were surprised Bennet went #1 overall.

-I thought Thabeet had high bust potential.

-Everyone thought Eddy Curry was the next Shaq when SLAM profiled him in 1999/2000. Everyone pegged him as the #1 pick in whatever draft he wanted to declare for. But I got the sense he wasn't a sure thing when he dropped to the #4 pick in the draft, when Kwame, Chandler and an unknown (to the US) Gasol all got taken over him.

-I'm mildly surprised by how bad Jabari turned out. The one thing I do remember is that people back in his HS/college days were already questioning him as a defensive player, and turns out they were right. He's downright awful on that end and doesn't even seem to care.

-Wiggins I thought was a bit overhyped (people calling him the Canadian Lebron and such), but I expected him to be productive. And he is sort of productive, but he's not efficient and the major thing for me is that he has worse instincts and feel for the game than I would've ever anticipated.

[Lalouie]

Yeah, Fultz was considered a relative sure thing. Perhaps not the super-high upside of other #1 overall picks but a higher floor then the other guys at the top of the draft.

That was shaky scouting, though, lots of us on the draft boards had a ton of questions about Fultz. Not the sort of ones were you're dwelling on weaknesses (e.g. Ben Simmons not trying hard on defense) but ones about how he was actually going to be a NBA player; he played sort of a slow-mo game and coasted a lot, and he relied way too much on fadeaways against smaller players. It was legitimately difficult for me to see how we he did at UW translated to the NBA, and people were weirdly quick to assume his 3pt% was real (while his FT% wasn't) and that he was going to be a monster in the pn'r. Both those things are insanely hard to be above average at in the NBA and Fultz definitely wasn't there in college.

To be clear, I basically liked him as a prospect and he was in my top 5, but he was like many other prospects who brought good packages but would've needed to develop well to become a good player (let alone great). Even if he didn't lose his shot completely he was more of a high upside prospect than a low floor one.

I remember everyone was hyping that draft class so much. (The buzz was primarily surrounding Fultz, Ball, and Fox. You were essentially getting a star PG either way.) But I remember watching Fultz's highlights and not seeing what the hype was about. I was actually excited to find out whether he would be better in the NBA... but.. you all know the rest...

Btw, here's one of the videos that was circulating around that time.

Watch on YouTube

fultz was a case of believing in the talent and willing to forgive the weaknesses, mainly HIS ATTITUDE. but it was all there for gm's to see but they didn't want to. or maybe it's just FO's and coaches have this big ego that makes them think they can deal with any personality. fultz was a loser with a poor work attitude going back at least as far as washington

[dc]

Can someone explain the Lonzo Hate to me?

His dad + getting drafted by the Lakers.

That's about 99.9% of it. The other 0.1% is probably his ugly looking shot.

[NZB2323]

Len Bias dying of cocaine overdose after being the 2nd pick in the draft was probably the biggest surprise.

[Kabookalu]

I'm not surprised Adam Morrison became a bust, but I am surprised he's in contention for worst player of all time. Thought his floor was at least a 7th/8th guy who can chip in some decent minutes and score/spread the floor a little like current Doug McDermott, yet he's significantly worse than Dougie McBuckets.

[TreyKincade]

Zion Williamson