Least impressive college/other player to have a decent NBA career

Post #1 » by **penbeast0** » Mon Aug 1, 2022 6:16 pm

Take 200 games as a decent career, who had showed the least prior to the NBA and yet went on to a 200 game plus NBA career. I'm assuming this list will be dominated by bigs with the guy you have to beat off the top of my head being Mark Eaton (averaged 2.1 ppg in his BEST college season); there are a few guys who came out of division 2 schools and the like (Manute Bol, Rick Mahorn, Ben Wallace, etc.) but even Manute was reasonably dominant at that level (22.5 pts, 13.5 reb).

clearlynotjesse · Post #2 » by **clearlynotjesse** » Mon Aug 1, 2022 6:27 pm

Giannis is surely number one on this list. Pre-NBA he was averaging 9 points in the 2nd tier Greek league. Now he's voted top 15 peak ever

BenoUdrihFTL · Post #3 » by **BenoUdrihFTL** » Mon Aug 1, 2022 7:03 pm

Dennis Rodman didn't even make it to D2 collegiate ball (he did dominate the NAIA tbf) and was drafted in the 2nd round at age 25 before putting together a HOF career and becoming arguably the greatest rebounder and one of the more highly regarded defenders in NBA history

Cavsfansince84 · Post #4 » by **Cavsfansince84** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 3:25 am

Fred VanVleet seems like a mention. Barely a star despite playing 4 years at Wichita St(12.2ppg as a sr). Goes undrafted and has to work his way onto an nba team.

falcolombardi · Post #5 » by **falcolombardi** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 4:03 am

clearlynotjesse wrote:Giannis is surely number one on this list. Pre-NBA he was averaging 9 points in the 2nd tier Greek league. Now he's voted top 15 peak ever

I think giannis was too young to count for this

giberish · Post #6 » by **giberish** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 4:32 am

Cavsfansince84 wrote:Fred VanVleet seems like a mention. Barely a star despite playing 4 years at Wichita St(12.2ppg as a sr). Goes undrafted and has to work his way onto an nba team.

Not really. Even relatively casual fans had heard of VanVleet in college. He wasn't seen as a big NBA prospect but had a significant career (especially compared to Rodman or Eaton for example). His ppg wasn't that high as he was a pass-first PG.

giberish · Post #7 » by **giberish** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 4:34 am

falcolombardi wrote:
clearlynotjesse wrote:Giannis is surely number one on this list. Pre-NBA he was averaging 9 points in the 2nd tier Greek league. Now he's voted top 15 peak ever

I think giannis was too young to count for this

There's a whole lot of guys who entered the league very young (either 18 or later 19 yos) who were drafted on physical potential without having done much beyond HS/youth teams.

Cavsfansince84 · Post #8 » by **Cavsfansince84** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 6:22 am

giberish wrote:
Cavsfansince84 wrote:Fred VanVleet seems like a mention. Barely a star despite playing 4 years at Wichita St(12.2ppg as a sr). Goes undrafted and has to work his way onto an nba team.

Not really. Even relatively casual fans had heard of VanVleet in college. He wasn't seen as a big NBA prospect but had a significant career (especially compared to Rodman or Eaton for example). His ppg wasn't that high as he was a pass-first PG.

A lot of nba fans barely follow college, more so for guys who are not considered elite prospects. I hope you are not referencing nba fans here knowing who VanVleet was.

giberish · Post #9 » by **giberish** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 7:37 am

Cavsfansince84 wrote:
giberish wrote:
Cavsfansince84 wrote:Fred VanVleet seems like a mention. Barely a star despite playing 4 years at Wichita St(12.2ppg as a sr). Goes undrafted and has to work his way onto an nba team.

Not really. Even relatively casual fans had heard of VanVleet in college. He wasn't seen as a big NBA prospect but had a significant career (especially compared to Rodman or Eaton for example). His ppg wasn't that high as he was a pass-first PG.

A lot of nba fans barely follow college, more so for guys who are not considered elite prospects. I hope you are not referencing nba fans here knowing who VanVleet was.

He was 1st team all-conference 3 times. Conference POY twice. Only honorable mention AP All-American but did so in 3 seasons. Made a few other all-american teams. Some early season injuries kept his SR year totals down. While he played at a smaller college he was on a final four team one year, and a team that started 31-0 another year that kept them in the national media (including an SI cover).

While not the most decorated college career of all-time, he was very, very, very far from obscure. He was just seen as a college star that wasn't much of an NBA prospect so he didn't get drafted. Which is really the opposite of what the OP was asking for.

Owly · Post #10 » by **Owly** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 10:07 am

So I sort of drafted a response to OP saying 1) I liked that decent NBA career was given a hard definition to focus the debate. 2) That Giannis was more over that bar than he was low on the pre-NBA bar (ditto Jokic, and noted some positive pre-draft projections) 3) Some messy contemplation on draft position as a proxy.

But I wasn't happy with it .

giberish wrote:
Cavsfansince84 wrote:
giberish wrote:
Not really. Even relatively casual fans had heard of VanVleet in college. He wasn't seen as a big NBA prospect but had a significant career (especially compared to Rodman or Eaton for example). His ppg wasn't that high as he was a pass-first PG.

A lot of nba fans barely follow college, more so for guys who are not considered elite prospects. I hope you are not referencing nba fans here knowing who VanVleet was.

He was 1st team all-conference 3 times. Conference POY twice. Only honorable mention AP All-American but did so in 3 seasons. Made a few other all-american teams. Some early season injuries kept his SR year totals down. While he played at a smaller college he was on a final four team one year, and a team that started 31-0 another year that kept them in the national media (including an SI cover).

While not the most decorated college career of all-time, he was very, very, very far from obscure. He was just seen as a college star that wasn't much of an NBA prospect so he didn't get drafted. Which is really the opposite of what the OP was asking for.

So I don't follow NCAA but I know there were BPM based NCAA based projections that rated VanVleet very high. Thus I would argue it was plausibly more a case of scouts/GMs missing the boat (and I don't know about this stuff, but I've heard some players/agents try pushing back on getting picked in the second round - prefer the freedom if not given the security of a 1st round pick, don't know if that was in play back then or for him specifically) than FVV not showing stuff in the NCAA.

So whilst a high pick would be close to (though perhaps not quite) a disqualifier for me in terms of being eligible as it would seem you had to have shown something pre-NBA (or poor GM judgement is the alternative/getaround) I do think in this instance FVV appears to have shown the ability and a lot of people just missed it, figured he didn't translate.

I will note that FVV too is far exceeding the minimum bar OP gave for decent career. As such it seems to be going for a "greatest gap" rather than "worst pre-NBA 'youth'" career that got to NBA at a certain minimum level (200g) which is more how OP framed it.

More generally I wouldn't claim any expertise in comparing the value/level of competition/ achievements in different conferences, DI, DII, DIII, high school or youth international competition.

Post #11 » by **Clyde Frazier** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 1:48 pm

Swen Nater career college stats in 2 seasons at UCLA: 4.9 PPG and 4 RPG on 50.8% FG + 62.3% FT. Went on to play 233 games in the ABA, 489 games in the NBA and made 2 ABA all star teams. From 77-81 in the NBA put up a respectable 13.7 PPG, 12.3 RPG, 2.3 APG on 57.8% TS.

I’ll try to come back with some guys who didn’t play at one of the best college programs ever tho lol…

Dr Positivity · Post #12 » by **Dr Positivity** » Tue Aug 2, 2022 2:01 pm

Lavine - 9ppg bench player for UCLA
Drummond was kind of a stiff at UConn