The busts of the busts

The majority of articles on the interwebs that focus on draft “busts” tend to focus exclusively on lottery picks. While I do think there is some merit to analyzing draft picks via that method – it often leads to interesting lists of “who could have been drafted in this spot” – this methodology of analyzing “busts” often ignores the fact that -

a)  Some of these players did not, in fact, have horrible careers – they just were not as good as the players drafted after them

• Samaki Walker, for example, was drafted 9^th in 1996, four spots ahead of Kobe Bryant and six spots ahead of Steve Nash and happens to pop up on a lot of “bust” lists. That said, he did not have what I would consider to be awful career numbers – he played 10 seasons in the NBA, averaged 5.3 pts and 4.7 rbs, and Phil Jackson, someone who knows a thing or two about basketball, thought that Walker was capable enough to start 63 games on his 2001-02 Lakers team, which went 58-24 and swept the Nets in the NBA finals.

b)  You can be a bust whilst not being a lottery pick

• Obviously a team that has a top-14 pick does not want to see that player under-perform, but first round picks are (in 99% of cases) offered guaranteed, two season contracts, and thus a 16th pick that has a sub-par career (Troy Bell - see below) should be considered alongside players such as Robert Swift (12th in 2004) and Julian Wright (13th in 2007), both of whom traditionally show up on "bust" lists.

With this in mind, I perused Basketball Reference to find some of the worst first round picks in history in terms of absolute NBA performance. For NBA fans, this is quite an interesting case study into the reasons why players do not pan out in the NBA – lack of true position, lack of NBA skills, injuries, mental health issues, substance abuse, poor attitude, lack of opportunity – in many cases a combination of two or more of those factors.

In keeping with the analytical theme of this blog, this post consists of all lottery-era first round picks who played both under 20 career games and under 150 career minutes in the NBA – this puts these players in the bottom 1% of lottery-era first round picks in both categories.

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Troy Bell – PG, Boston College

Draft:  16^th overall in 2003 by Boston Celtics

NBA Stats: 6 games played, 34 minutes played, 11 points

Why he was a first round pick: Troy Bell had a fantastic four year career at Boston College, scoring a (still standing) school record 2,632 points (21.6 ppg) – to give you some perspective, Reggie Jackson, the current starting guard for the Thunder, went to BC and never averaged more than 18.2 ppg in a season. Looking at the stats – Bell was adept and driving to the lane and drawing fouls – he is 7^th all time in free throws made, and converted at an extremely efficient 86.8% clip (only behind Bill Bradley among players in Top-25 in free throws made in FT %).

What happened: Despite being lightning fast and super athletic, he was not a pass first point guard and 6’1’’ volume scorers who are not named Allen Iverson and who have injury problems do not tend to have long, prosperous NBA careers.

Fun Fact: Bell attempted to become a boxer. He also made a NSFW music video