Draft mistakes that were obvious in real time…

[Imon]

Bagley over Doncic
Darko over Wade, Carmelo and Bosh

This always reminds me of the Reddit "prophecy" of Luka.

[zeebneeb]

Bagley over Doncic
Darko over Wade, Carmelo and Bosh

This is absolutely, 100% not true. Darko was the concensus #2 pick behind Lebron.

Take it from a Pistons fan, we all know the story inside and out.

There was nothing obvious about it.

[BigGargamel]

Wesley Johnson over DeMarcus Cousins immediately comes to mind.

Olowokandi was a terrible number one overall pick

[BigGargamel]

Bagley over Doncic
Darko over Wade, Carmelo and Bosh

This is absolutely, 100% not true. Darko was the concensus #2 pick behind Lebron.

Take it from a Pistons fan, we all know the story inside and out.

There was nothing obvious about it.

Naah. Not Bosh and Wade but Melo was #2 behind LeBron. I remember being terrified the Pistons were going to take Melo and Denver would be stuck with Darko and Tskitishvili.

[Imon]

Wesley Johnson over DeMarcus Cousins immediately comes to mind.

Olowokandi was a terrible number one overall pick

True, but that was a weird draft.
Paul Pierce fell for some weird reason. I'm not sure it's ever been explained why he fell to 10th but I think it might have been because no one selected him high so maybe the other GMs got scared. Who know? I certainly think GMs were dumber back then.

Vince Carter went 5th and won ROY.

Dirk was a complete unknown - the reason Donnie Nelson knew to draft Dirk was because he was practicing with the World team in a YMCA gym in Dallas for the Nike Hoops Summit game in San Antonio and Donnie got an exclusive one-week look at Dirk while other GMs were in the dark about Dirk.

[brutalitops]

Luka not being 1 was travesty, more so looking at it from Europe.

Nope

Every GM would of taken Ayton first, As every mock draft ect.

Of course Luka is clearly the better player, this is taking about real time, not hindsight.

[brutalitops]

Bagley over Doncic
Darko over Wade, Carmelo and Bosh

This is absolutely, 100% not true. Darko was the concensus #2 pick behind Lebron.

Take it from a Pistons fan, we all know the story inside and out.

There was nothing obvious about it.

Naah. Not Bosh and Wade but Melo was #2 behind LeBron. I remember being terrified the Pistons were going to take Melo and Denver would be stuck with Darko and Tskitishvili.

Most mock drafts you find online had Darko as pick 2.

Funnily enough most had Hinrick at 5 over Wade

[Richard4444]

2018 - Knox over Mikal, Miles, Shai, and MPJr. (I confess I want to believe Knox could be a poor"s man KD but he was not a lottery pick consensus at the time).
2018 - Jerome Robinson over MPJr. Jerome who?
2019 - Hayes over anyone else. (getting a pretty common C in 8th in this day and age is not a good move).
2019 - Cameron Johnson over anyone else- What the hell getting a player mocked around 25-30 with the 11th?. Never mind. The Sun's stroke gold.
2020 - James Wiseman. Using a #2 pick to get an offensive-minded Center who is not a great shooter is a risky move despite his obvious potential. Also, he was too raw to help a contender. And LaMello Ball was clearly the BPA.
2020 - Obi Toppin over Tyrese Haliburton. (getting a small, no-shooting offensive-minded PF with the 8th pick is very risky).
2021 -Zhaire Williams and Primo were picked too soon. But, it's too soon to draw conclusions.

[nickhx2]

as mentioned by js it's kind of a hard exercise to do because lots of these are hindsight 20/20 kinda things.

but i will say the cp3/williams thing was MIND-BOGGLING. they already had josh smith and josh childress, they needed a PG, chris paul WANTED to play there, and they went with williams anyway. totally insane.

[Kingdibs19]

Wow this long and nobody mentioned Bargnani @ #1…everyone thought that was horrible, except for big collars Colangelo

[sp6r=underrated]

Marvin Williams over Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Atlanta had no PG and already had a million forwards…

Yi Jianlian over Joakim Noah. Noah being an older prospect hurt his value but he was a proven do everything big men while Yi was a do nothing big man

Hasheem Thabeet over anyone.. drafting a stiff big with bad feet #2 just because it was 2009

Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry…. Curry wasn’t an elite prospect coming out of Davidson but they had just taken a pass first PG in Rubio. Why pair him an undersized guard that couldn’t shoot?

Wesley Johnson #4 and Ekpe Udoh #6.. both 23 year old rookies who were big reaches over younger upside players

Thomas Robinson #5.. a high energy but undersized 4 that couldn’t shoot or play defense. The next 3 picks were Lillard, Barnes and Drummond

What were some other more recent?

I like your standard of no hindsight. Attacking a team for a pick every other team would have made is silly. So with that in mind the standard for a pick being dumb is (i) almost no other team would have picked the players in that spot; (ii) at the time people were either confused the pick happened or were saying before the draft Team A has an outlier opinion on Player B; and (iii) player B performing below the average player picked at the spot.

The third criteria needs to be explained. The standard for underperformance isn't relative to the players picked after them but the average level of production for players picked there. By that I mean you're looking at the average performance of players picked at that spot.

Anthony Bennett was a huge bust. The Cavs picking him at that spot was considered really strange. Almost no other teams would have picked him there. Anthony Bennett performed well below the average #1 Pick. Out of all players picked number since 1987 he ranks

2nd to Last in MP. Cade Cunningham is 1st so I expect Bennett will take the crown soon again.
Last in BPM
2nd to last in VORP. Only reason is he washed out of the NBA much sooner than the Crappy man.

Olowkandi was equally as bad. When the Clippers picked him it was a huge surprise. He was a huge trainwreck and his career would have ended much sooner if stiffs weren't valued so much back then.

Flynn performed well worse than typical 6th pick and no one valued him that highly.

[SkyBill40]

Luka not being 1 was travesty, more so looking at it from Europe.

Nope

Every GM would of taken Ayton first, As every mock draft ect.

Of course Luka is clearly the better player, this is taking about real time, not hindsight.

Nah. Unless you have hard data that shows a poll of NBA GMs and who they would have actually taken, all you have is an opinion and nothing more. For that matter, as a Suns fan, I wanted Doncic and know a lot of others who felt the same. The reason we took Ayton is largely due to Robert Sarver's UofA ties and little else.

[JRoy]

Wow this long and nobody mentioned Bargnani @ #1…everyone thought that was horrible, except for big collars Colangelo

That was kind of a weird draft, didn’t seem to be a consensus #1. I remember Gay being mentioned as a possibility.

[Ell Curry]

You have to remember what people were saying at the time because it's easy to call bad picks bad picks in hindsight. I remember Wesley Johnson, Epke Udoh, and Hasheem Thabeet all having plenty of fans/supporters. There was a logic to drafting each of those guys despite it not turning out. The Bagley pick was bad yeah, but we were all debating whether Luka's athleticism would translate to the NBA.

Off OP's list, I remember Johnny Flynn being thought of as a bad pick in real time. Flynn had supporters, and he had some gutsy performances, but everyone agreed that he didn't have the upside of Rubio, and he was also nowhere near the college player Curry was. (Though people were really worried Curry's game wouldn't translate.) I had Jonny Flynn at 19 on my big board.

I remember Shelden Williams going #5 being a big surprise. I think people had him as a likely lottery pick and most people thought he was going to become a solid starting center (whoops). But when his name came at 5, people were mad that such a low upside pick went so high. Thomas Robinson was a bit like this too, but he had some big supporters due to his advanced stats in college (if memory serves).

Some players that I was really low on ended up being right about: Derrick Williams, Xavier Henry, Jordan Hill, Jahlil Okafor, Ben McLemore. (I have plenty of bad draft takes, so I'm taking my Ws on these guys!)

Wesley Johnson had nice overall stats at Syracuse, I'm pretty sure I thought his floor would be a solid bench forward like a Thad Young type.

Jordan Hill was ridiculous in the moment.

Xavier Henry seemed like he would be a nice scoring 2 guard.

Thomas Robinson was the opposite I think. His low FG% from 2 meant advanced stats guys thought he couldn't score at the NBA level since he was bullying guys in college and still only shooting 50% from 2. The eye test was better on him since his strength and motor were good.

McLemore has stuck around in the NBA and hit 3s and has good athleticism, I think to guess that he would never learn to dribble or read the game is the kind of thing it's hard for fans just watching to pick up and interviewing him and his coaches would help.

Flynn was a weird pick for sure.

Curry I remember on here, the dumb part of people underrating him was that they thought he couldn't be a PG but Davidson had literally one other Division 1 starting quality player and it was a tiny white guy who could really pass the ball at a very high level so he had to play the 1.

Luka was insane in the moment. Nobody knew if his athleticism would translate, but his floor was still as high as the ceiling of the other guys in the drafts, since they all had serious warts (Bagley a tweener who put up empty stats, Arizona's defence was horrific with Ayton there which anchoring it, Jaren Jackson looked likely to not be a big scorer or rebounder and Izzo benched him when it mattered though that was just Izzo being a rageaholic and Trae Young being a definite minus on D). I would have had far more sympathy for the Luka skeptics even though he was miles ahead of other Euro draftees in terms of accomplishment, if 1-2 of the other guys in the draft had been truly elite prospects.

[Ell Curry]

Wow this long and nobody mentioned Bargnani @ #1…everyone thought that was horrible, except for big collars Colangelo

That was kind of a weird draft, didn’t seem to be a consensus #1. I remember Gay being mentioned as a possibility.

The crazy thing about this draft was that Gay didn't go first because he was seen as too passive a scorer and instead he came into the league and thought he was Kevin Durant.

[Dominator83]

Bulls selling the farm for Doug McDermott. Everybody knew that was going to be a disaster

[TheLand13]

Marvin Williams over Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Atlanta had no PG and already had a million forwards…

Yi Jianlian over Joakim Noah. Noah being an older prospect hurt his value but he was a proven do everything big men while Yi was a do nothing big man

Hasheem Thabeet over anyone.. drafting a stiff big with bad feet #2 just because it was 2009

Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry…. Curry wasn’t an elite prospect coming out of Davidson but they had just taken a pass first PG in Rubio. Why pair him an undersized guard that couldn’t shoot?

Wesley Johnson #4 and Ekpe Udoh #6.. both 23 year old rookies who were big reaches over younger upside players

Thomas Robinson #5.. a high energy but undersized 4 that couldn’t shoot or play defense. The next 3 picks were Lillard, Barnes and Drummond

What were some other more recent?

I have no idea how you don't have Anthony Bennett on this list. We literally got a shocked live commentator reaction when the pick was made because even he knew how stupid of a pick it was.

[TheLand13]

Bagley over Doncic
Darko over Wade, Carmelo and Bosh

This is absolutely, 100% not true. Darko was the concensus #2 pick behind Lebron.

Take it from a Pistons fan, we all know the story inside and out.

There was nothing obvious about it.

Naah. Not Bosh and Wade but Melo was #2 behind LeBron. I remember being terrified the Pistons were going to take Melo and Denver would be stuck with Darko and Tskitishvili.

Almost everyone knew at the time that Darko was going number 2 behind LeBron.

[Hook_Em]

Marvin Williams over Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Atlanta had no PG and already had a million forwards…

Yi Jianlian over Joakim Noah. Noah being an older prospect hurt his value but he was a proven do everything big men while Yi was a do nothing big man

Hasheem Thabeet over anyone.. drafting a stiff big with bad feet #2 just because it was 2009

Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry…. Curry wasn’t an elite prospect coming out of Davidson but they had just taken a pass first PG in Rubio. Why pair him an undersized guard that couldn’t shoot?

Wesley Johnson #4 and Ekpe Udoh #6.. both 23 year old rookies who were big reaches over younger upside players

Thomas Robinson #5.. a high energy but undersized 4 that couldn’t shoot or play defense. The next 3 picks were Lillard, Barnes and Drummond

What were some other more recent?

I have no idea how you don't have Anthony Bennett on this list. We literally got a shocked live commentator reaction when the pick was made because even he knew how stupid of a pick it was.

Cause it was a terrible draft at the time. There were rumors Alex Len was going #1.

[Jables]

I remember a lot of debate on Curry and there's some revisionism with Flynn, hip surgery **** him over, he wasn't that bad a talent. Not saying it was great or anything but lots of things look worse in hindsight, as is the nature with these things.

McDermott was such a bad pick it was sad, the Bulls just wanted a scorer ffs and they got someone absolutely unplayable on D that Thibodeau was never going to even try to develop, and for him traded two picks that not only turned into Harris and Nurkic, plus Joe Harris was a second round pick they could have traded down for. Then they traded McDermott and Gibson for 3rd rate talent that was released or signed elsewhere. All bad, but everyone know it was a disaster the moment he was picked.