Biggest surprise bust ever?

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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#61 » by ellobo » Thu Sep 5, 2019 11:52 am

jove9 wrote:Come on, guys. The conversation should start and possibly stop at Danny Ferry. Dude held out for a trade after being drafted, and once he did he sucked royally.

Honorable mention to Harold "Baby Jordan" Miner.


Ferry badly underperformed his draft slot, but he had a 13 year NBA career, shot over 39% from 3, was a rotation player for a Finals team and a member of a championship team. That's a disappointment if you actually thought he would be a star and deserved to be drafted 2nd overall (did YOU really think he should have gone that high and been a star?), but it's still a legitimate NBA career.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#62 » by Myth » Thu Sep 5, 2019 12:48 pm

Not the worst player, but Michael Beasley comes to mind. The dude averaged 26/12 in college. For comparison, Zion has unreal hype and averaged under 23/9.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#63 » by Myth » Thu Sep 5, 2019 12:48 pm

Oh, and Adam Morrison.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#64 » by Fencer reregistered » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:02 pm

clyde21 wrote:obvious answer is Fultz


Yeah. When guards are picked #1 overall they rarely bust. The list over the past 40 years is:

Magic Johnson
Allen Iverson
Derrick Rose
John Wall
Kyrie Irving
Andrew Wiggins
Ben Simmons
Markelle Fultz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first_overall_NBA_draft_picks
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#65 » by dc » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:04 pm

ellobo wrote:
jove9 wrote:Come on, guys. The conversation should start and possibly stop at Danny Ferry. Dude held out for a trade after being drafted, and once he did he sucked royally.

Honorable mention to Harold "Baby Jordan" Miner.


Ferry badly underperformed his draft slot, but he had a 13 year NBA career, shot over 39% from 3, was a rotation player for a Finals team and a member of a championship team. That's a disappointment if you actually thought he would be a star and deserved to be drafted 2nd overall (did you?), but it's still a legitimate NBA career.


Plus this thread is about SURPRISE busts, as in you are genuinely SURPRISED that the guy didn't pan out.

Ferry was a slow white dude out of Duke. Nobody can possibly say that he was some sure fire star who you thought was completely fail proof.

A guy like Lonzo (who it's still way too early to judge) shouldn't even be in this discussion. There were plenty of Lonzo skeptics when he was headed for the draft.

Even a guy like Harold Minor shouldn't really be in the discussion. The guy was first touted as a sure fire Top 3 pick, but then he measured out at 6'3" at the combine and his draft stock fell. He ended up getting drafted behind Adam Keefe for crying out loud, LOL. NBA teams correctly pegged him as not that great of a prospect.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#66 » by dc » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:16 pm

Capn'O wrote:
dc wrote: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.


This is a good one. I thought he was a Tim Duncan/Shaq level prospect after he just annihilated everyone in college. Different in that he would have been more scoring and less defense but he just looked on another level. Even his rookie year was dominant for a two year college player. IIRC, he was one of those guys that got paid early and didn't really improve after.


Yeah, the thing I remember about Big Dog Robinson was that the teams picking behind the Bucks (Mavs and Pistons) who ended up drafting Kidd/Hill were actually trying to trade UP to the #1 spot to grab him, but the Bucks said no. Think about that for a second. Everyone was convinced the guy was can't miss and it was a consensus that he should be taken over guys like Kidd/Hill.

And he did have an excellent rookie year along with a couple all-star years, but even those years he was never close to Kidd/Hill.

He ended up turning out to be one dimensional. Just a pure mid-range scorer who wasn't much of a defender or playmaker and didn't make his teammates better. He didn't improve on his game.

I would think of him as a Carmelo type guy who flamed out way sooner. Carmelo started heading down hill in his early 30s. Big Dog started taking a dive in his mid 20s.

And you're right about the guy getting paid early and probably getting complacent. 1994 was the year before rookie scale contracts started. Back then, the top drafts prospects negotiated huge contracts from the get go. They definitely got paid early.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#67 » by Fencer reregistered » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:33 pm

Myth wrote:Oh, and Adam Morrison.


An unathletic guy with diabetes? Not in the running for biggest surprise.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#68 » by Fencer reregistered » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:37 pm

Not a tip-top example, but: I assumed Pitino could judge his own players, so I was surprised about Ron Mercer.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#69 » by dhsilv2 » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:50 pm

Always blows my mind that people are talking about guys under 25 who are still in the league. Not everyone progresses at the same rate. Hell we had people calling Embiid a bust before he ever played a game.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#70 » by dhsilv2 » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:51 pm

Fencer reregistered wrote:Not a tip-top example, but: I assumed Pitino could judge his own players, so I was surprised about Ron Mercer.


Weren't injuries a factor for him as well?
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#71 » by dhsilv2 » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:54 pm

Fencer reregistered wrote:
clyde21 wrote:obvious answer is Fultz


Yeah. When guards are picked #1 overall they rarely bust. The list over the past 40 years is:

Magic Johnson
Allen Iverson
Derrick Rose
John Wall
Kyrie Irving
Andrew Wiggins
Ben Simmons
Markelle Fultz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first_overall_NBA_draft_picks


He's 21 years old...if you're still in the league at that age, you're too young to be called a bust.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#72 » by dhsilv2 » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:56 pm

HotelVitale wrote:
Plossum wrote:Fultz, wiggins, Beasley and Mayo are good calls.

Not to be a broken record but it shouldn't have surprised anyone that the last 3 guys weren't able to be diverse or efficient enough to be stars in the league. People that liked them as prospects had every reason to think they COULD be efficient and develop enough peripheral skills to thrive as a score-first wing--they were all good prospects--but it seems well within the standard draft margin of error for those guys to have turned out like they did. Wiggins never had a NBA handle or a brilliant shot in college, none of Mayo's size/athleticism/shot were special, and Beasley's stroke was never pure enough to mean success on its own; we all knew that but those 3 also all had some very good attributes and were very good gambles. Not sure how exactly anyone could be disappointed that Beasley could manage 43/34 splits on his shooting but not the 50/40 ones that would've made him a very good player--that's a small margin and no one could've ever known how to predict where he'd land on that spectrum. It's literally a matter of an inch or two on 3 shots per game, all while playing against monstrous athletes at a very fast and jerky pace. And Wiggins not being able to learn how to drive and finish around, over, and through guys isn't weird--those things are hard as f to do at a high NBA level, and no one should have expected him to do so. He's used his athletic tools to score 20ppg a few times, but like with Beas no one could've known exactly how well he'd shoot or what his other supplementary skills would look like in NBA games.


Wiggins was a sure thing defensive guy though...that never happened
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#73 » by JXL » Thu Sep 5, 2019 1:59 pm

BIRD UP!
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#74 » by ellobo » Thu Sep 5, 2019 2:10 pm



He was picked 23rd overall, played 13 seasons, started 543 games out of 824, and was a rotation player on a championship team. Michael Redd is probably the only player drafted after him who was better.

That's not only not a bust, but arguably not even disappointing for his draft position.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#75 » by spikeslovechild » Thu Sep 5, 2019 2:13 pm

Oden and Fultz. Also Bias.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#76 » by AbeVigodaLive » Thu Sep 5, 2019 2:14 pm

Miltpalaciofanclub wrote:Clarence Weatherspoon



How dare you rip Spoon.

Picked 9th in the '92 draft... 6th in career Win Shares.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#77 » by AbeVigodaLive » Thu Sep 5, 2019 2:17 pm

Catchall wrote:Thought he'd be really good: Michael Beasley

Am now highly concerned: Josh Jackson

Honorable Mention: Archie Goodwin, Wesley Johnson





Smilin' Wes Johnson never averaged 17 points... in his life.

Not in college. Not in high school. So I think the real shocker here is that such a guy went #4 in the NBA draft as an older (23) college player.

Yet here we are nearly a decade later, and he's still getting occasional starts in the NBA.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#78 » by TravisScott55 » Thu Sep 5, 2019 2:20 pm

Considering the hype, Andrew Wiggins and Michael Beasley.

Also a number 1 pick forgetting how to play basketball was very surprising.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#79 » by spikeslovechild » Thu Sep 5, 2019 2:20 pm

Christian Laettner should be up there and Dennis Hopson too.
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Re: Biggest surprise bust ever? 

Post#80 » by Bologna Smasher » Thu Sep 5, 2019 2:22 pm

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

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