Since we are currently approaching the 2009 NBA Draft, I deemed it appropriate that I compile a list of the absolute worst NBA players to come out of the lotteries in 10 of the last 11 drafts, skipping 2008 (still too soon to see who’s the worst after only one season.)
While this may seem like just any typical ‘worst NBA players’ list, the purpose of this is to see if we can learn anything by analyzing this list:
1998 – Robert ‘Tractor’ Traylor – 6’8”, 284lbs. – 6th overall – 13 letters (in name)
1999 – Aleksandar Radojević – 7’3”, 250lbs. – 12th overall – 19 letters
2000 – Jérôme Moïso – 6’10”, 235lbs. – 6’8”, 284lbs. – 11th overall – 11 letters
2001 – Kedrick Brown – 6’7”, 222lbs. – 9th overall – 12 letters
2002 – Nikoloz Tskitishvili – 7’, 245lbs. – 5th overall – 19 letters
Former Lottery Pick Moïso is seen here playing where he should be: not in the NBA.
2003 – Marcus Banks – 6’2”, 200lbs. – 13th overall – 11 letters
2004 – Luke Jackson – 6’7”, 215lbs. – 10th overall – 11 letters
2005 – Yaroslav Korolev – 6’10”, 203lbs. – 12th overall – 15 letters
2006 – Mouhamed Sene – 6’11”, 230lbs. – 10th overall – 12 letters
2007 – Acie Law IV – 6’3”, 195lbs. – 11th overall – 9 letters
H.G. Wells once said: “History is a race between education and catastrophe.”
While we certainly will be focusing on the catastrophe element of these players’ disappointing careers a great deal, what we hope to find out through these slightly subjective statistics (slightly only because I am almost certain that hardly anyone would disagree with me on my picks) is at least something we did not realize before we picked this list apart.
The following three observations made off of the corresponding data are meant to not only open the mind, but to also… corrupt it. After all, as the great journalist Sean O’Neill now says: “No horrid player shall drift away out of vain.”
… and so we begin.
1. Determining the pick of death
In this context, I will define the ‘pick of death’ as the pick least likely to succeed. Over the course of the NBA’s last 10 drafts (of course, pretending 2008 never happened), I have deduced from the data that the worst possible pick in the lottery is the #10 pick (the formula came out with 9.9, which is close enough.)
What I did was not all that complex – take the draft number of every player on the list, add those numbers together, and divide the product by ten.
On a serious note, what I have seen from the data without doing some silly math formula is that the last pick in the lottery has never produced the worst player. Why that is remains to be seen, and it is unlikely that one could ever draw an objective solution to such an anomaly.
This year’s draft will feature the Milwaukee Bucks picking tenth overall.
The Bucks picked sixth overall just two years ago, selecting Yi Jianlian. They returned to the lottery the next year, selecting Joe Alexander with the eighth overall pick.
It also might be worth mentioning that they chose to pick Andrew Bogut out of Australia with the first overall pick in the 2005 draft.
The reason I am bringing all of this up is because there seems to be a trend with the Bucks’ recent draft picks: they either do not work out, or the Bucks choose to not wait around anymore to see if they do.
Andrew Bogut is averaging around 12 and 9 for his career thus far, which, while good, is really not all that impressive for a guy that went off the board before great talents such as Chris Paul and Deron Williams.
Yi Jianlian was shipped off a year after he was selected by the Bucks when they traded him in a package deal for Richard Jefferson, and Joe Alexander is currently looking to be the worst player from the lottery of his respective class (however, like I said, it is too early to tell.)
The Bucks have failed to have their high draft picks materialize into success as a franchise. Seeing as both the Bucks and the tenth pick have a sort of astigmatism attached to them due to past failures with regards to the NBA draft, it seems that they are the perfect franchise to prove my theory right.
2. What is the worst body type to draft?
Well, let’s take a look at our list, shall we?
By adding up the heights of all of the players, and dividing the total by ten, we see that the worst height you could draft is 6’8 1/2”. The worst weight you could choose would be 235lbs.
The player matching that the best, with both height and weight considered, is Kedrick Brown, who posted career averages of 3.6 ppg and 2.4 rpg.
It is hard to do much worse than that, but if you are interested, see Yaroslav Korolev. He put forth efforts that included a staggering 1.1 ppg to go along with a monstrous 0.5 rpg, all the while dishing out a mind-blowing 0.4 apg – a stat that clearly puts John Stockton to shame.
On a serious note, what we see is that big athletic forwards with little basketball IQ hardly ever pan out, and big men are least likely to succeed.
It seems that, the bigger you are, the harder it is to be a success.
Which brings me to my next rhetorical question…
3. What is the worst first/last name letter amount to select?
By now, I am extremely sure that you have all figured out my master formula. If you have, congratulations! You have passed the third grade.
The worst first/last name letter amount you could possibly have in a player is 13.
Robert Traylor, who landed with – who else – the Milwaukee Bucks on draft day, has a total of 13 letters in his name. Of course, we are not counting his nickname, ‘Tractor.’
The humorous part about Traylor being involved here is how they traded a future quality scorer to get him. What was the sniping scorer’s name? Dirk Nowitzki, of course.
That’s one less letter, but a billion times more talent.
As we have recently witnessed, the Bucks still have not learned.
Yesterday, they traded Richard Jefferson, their second best scorer, for a package that contained little else than a 38-year-old Bruce Bowen, who is basically useless at this point in his career. Great.
Well, that just about does it. What we have seen today is that, not only does the lottery contain some horrible players, but it also produces creepily relevant parallels to totally irrelevant things.
While I am not really sure if anyone cares about the worst pick, the worst body type or the worst letter amount (that one was by far the most idiotic), we can be sure of at least one thing:
If the Bucks pick 10th in the 2009 NBA Draft, they will definitely screw it up. However, if the Bucks pick somewhere else in the draft, they will probably screw it up anyways.
I really, really need a nap.
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