NBA Draft

Last year I wrote a WDTWG column chronicling the bad luck that has befallen the Portland Trail Blazers in the NBA Draft.  With the 2013 version happening today and since I now have a weekly Blazers column, I thought I’d revisit that column from last July here.

Portland got the steal of the draft last year in point guard Damian Lillard and they picked up a promising young center in Meyers Leonard as well.  Portland knows what they have in Lillard.  He’s the franchise, the building-block, the future all star.  Who knows what Leonard will turn out to be.  He has incredible athleticism and superior jump-shooting ability for a big man, but he needs A LOT of work on defense, rebounding and just knowing where to be on the floor.  It will probably take a few years before the organization determines whether or not Leonard was a good pick but he appears to be on the right track.

The Trail Blazers have the 10th pick in this year’s draft and it remains to be seen whether or not they will keep the pick or trade it to obtain a mixture of players and future draft picks.  Whatever they decide to do, there’s no guarantee the player they take will go on to have a productive career.  This draft is considered the worst in 13 years, so the likelihood that they miss out on a future Hall-of-Famer is pretty slim.

But they’ve managed to whiff on a number of picks over the years and because I apparently like to revisit dark days in Blazer history, here’s a look-back at some of their selections.

Every NBA team has their fair share of “my bad” picks, but the Trail Blazers have a long history of making “Wow, could have won a lot of championships with that guy, instead took that guy picks.”

It dates all the way back to 1972 when Portland selected LaRue Martin with the number one pick.  Martin would play four seasons in his career (all with Portland) averaging a whopping 5.3 points per game.  At the ripe old age of 25, Martin decided to hang it up.

The two players Portland passed up to take Martin: future Hall-of-Famer and scoring machine Bob McAdoo who went second, and ABA/NBA legend and also future Hall-of-Famer Julius Erving who was selected at number 12.

In 1976, Portland again had the opportunity to snatch up not one, but two future Hall-of-Famers and again failed.  Instead of taking Adrian Dantley at five, Portland selected some white dude named Wally Walker who would play 75 games over two seasons for Portland.  Dantley would play in six All Star games and score more than 23,000 points in his career. Oooops!!!

That same draft Portland took two of the three best players in the disbanded ABA Dispersal Draft: Moses Malone and Maurice Lucas.  They kept Lucas, who would go on to have a solid NBA career with Portland and help lead them to their only NBA title in 1977.

But the better of the two players, Moses Malone, would be dealt to the Buffalo Braves.  Malone was a three-time league MVP and twelve-time NBA All Star.  Imagine Portland having Malone, Dantley, Lucas and Bill Walton on the same team.  Pretty safe to assume they would have won multiple titles with that group.

In 1978 Portland again had the number one pick.  (Ah the good old days when you could win a championship and the following year get the top pick in the draft).  The Trail Blazers selected Mychal Thompson with their pick. Thompson would go on to have a solid career with Portland averaging around 17 points-per-game and shoot 50%.  But when you’re selected first, your career should be better than “solid.”  A guy they could have selected that year, someone named Larry Bird. Ouch!!

Now we fast forward to 1984. You knew it was coming.  That fateful year the Blazers made not only their worst pick in franchise history, but really the worst draft decision in NBA history.   At number two Portland selected Kentucky Center Sam Bowie.  With pick number three, Chicago drafted some guy named Michael Jordan.

The excuse for not taking Jordan was that Portland needed a big man.  They had already taken Clyde Drexler the year before and didn’t need another scoring guard.  You already know Jordan’s resume.  Bowie would go on to play five seasons with Portland.  The last three years he would play a grand total of 25 games or 10 percent of Portland’s total games over a three year period.  Here’s a thought, don’t draft a walking chandelier who missed two full seasons of college due to injuries!

So up to this point Portland either picked the right guy and traded him (Malone) or picked the wrong guy (Martin, Walker, Thompson, Bowie) and saw the better guy (Dantley, Bird, Jordan) go on to have great careers.  In 1986 Portland again picked the right guy, but they didn’t see him for a decade.

Arvydas Sabonis was selected in the first round by Portland.  Unable to come over to the states because he was still under contract with the Soviets, Sabonis would lead his Olympic team to the 1988 gold medal at the age of 23.  Once Russia fragmented in 1989 and Sabonis was allowed to leave the country, he shockingly signed with Spain instead of joining the Blazers.

Sabonis could do it all: run, jump, shoot from anywhere and pass as well as any big man who ever played the game.  By the time he arrived in Portland in 1995, Sabonis was 31.  His knee and foot injuries over the years sapped his quickness.  The young spry immortal was replaced by a lumbering caveman who could only lightly jog up and down the court.

Sabonis did play a key role on the 2000 Blazer team that got to the Western Conference Finals, but imagine if he had come over in the late ’80s.  Those entertaining, high-scoring Blazer teams featuring Drexler, Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey and Buck Williams made it to the finals in ’90 and ’92 with Kevin Duckworth at center.  Replace Duck with one of the greatest centers of that era and those finals outcomes could have gone a little differently.

From ’86 to ’06, Portland had mostly mediocre drafts but it was because they were always making the playoffs and therefore never had a high draft pick.  They did get Cliff Robinson in the second round in ’89 but their first round picks have consisted of players like James Robinson, Shawn Respert, Chris Anstey and Erick Barkley.

They did draft Jermaine O’Neal right out of high school in ’96.  But he sat on the bench for four years and was eventually traded for veteran Dale Davis.  O’Neal went on to make six straight All Star games for the Indiana Pacers.

In 2005, Portland had the third pick in the draft and decided to trade down and obtained the sixth pick.  If they had kept the third pick, they could have taken either Deron Williams or Chris Paul.  Instead they took high schooler Martell Webster.  In five season with the Blazers, Webster showed flashes of great ability, but he could never consistently put it together.  Williams and Paul on the other hand have been arguably the two best point guards in the NBA over that time period.

The ’06 draft was the one year Portland did everything right.  They obtained the two best players in that year’s draft (LaMarcus Aldrige and Brandon Roy) and they got both of them in draft day trades.  Until knee injuries ended his career, Roy was the most talented player Portland had since Clyde Drexler.  Aldridge is currently Portland’s best player and has been named to two consecutive All Star games.

The 2007 draft will unfortunately rank up there with the ’84 draft as one of Portland’s worst.  Instead of taking three-time scoring champion and recent NBA Finals participant Kevin Durant, the Blazers took Greg Oden.  Oden hasn’t stepped foot on an NBA court since December of 2009 and won’t again until the 2013-14 season.  He played 82 games in five seasons for Portland.  Durant has missed only 31 games in six years for the Thunder.

So as you can see, Portland has made a few bad decisions in the draft.  Of course every NBA team can say the same thing, but Portland’s in particular have been highly noted.  With every pick you make, there’s going to be what-ifs.

Like in ’84 when they drafted Bowie out of necessity, they did the same last year in filling holes at point guard and center.  Lillard was the right pick and we’ll have to wait and see with Leonard.  Tonight we’ll know whether or not Portland kept the pick and who they selected.  They’ll get a grade from draft experts, but you really won’t know if that particular player was “the right pick” for a few years.  With the current state of the organization, Portland can’t afford to make many more wrong decisions.