A Golden State Warrior Draft Day Retrospective—Oh, What Could've Been

With the National Basketball Association draft about a week away and the Golden State Warriors sitting on the No. 7 pick in this year's lottery, I thought it'd be a good time to take a walk down Draft Day Memory Lane, Warrior-style.

The scenery won't always be pretty.

Although Golden State's history of assessing and selecting college talent isn't as bad as the impression left by hindsight, it's not exactly peppered with outstanding picks.

Well, that's not accurate—there have been some fantastic choices made by the basketball franchise on the other side of the Bay.  Guys like Gilbert Arenas, Robert Parrish, Joe Smith, Vince Carter, Jeff Foster and Mickael Pietrus—diamonds in the rough or solid talents with obvious upside from the jump.

Unfortunately, those guys all went on to find their niches in the Association for other squads.  So, if you count stocking other teams' talent larders, then Golden State's draft record is immaculate.  As you'll see.

In honor of Golden State's No. 7 pick, I'm doing a Top 7:

Honorable mention, Paul Arizin—territorial pick in 1950, United States Marine, Korean War veteran, NBA Champion in 1956, entered Hall of Fame in 1978, named to the NBA 50th Anniversary Team in 1996

7.  Tim Hardaway—No. 14 pick in 1989

Once the UTEP Two Step was on the roster, the recipe for Run-TMC was complete.

With Timmy leading the break and dropping dimes when he wasn't sticking jumpers in the D's eye, Golden State was a blur.  A very high-scoring and entertaining blur.  In truth, there shouldn't have been enough shots to go around between the three (as well as whoever else happened to be on the court with the trio), but the mercurial point guard made it work.

The man with quicks almost as fast as his mouth orchestrated the attack so well, only Oscar Robertson reached 5000 points and 2500 assists faster.

Sadly, Tim Hardaway would join the procession of former Warriors destined for greater glory in another pasture—the Miami Heat's to be exact, where the guy who made the "Tieeem aeend Chrieees bahrger" a Bay Area favorite would make the Heat a perennial title contender (along with Alonzo Mourning) and even earn All-NBA First Team honors in 1997.

6.  Mitch Richmond—No. 5 pick in 1988

The second piece of Run-TMC to arrive and the first to leave, Richmond was arguably the most popular of the trio.  The silky-smooth assassin tickled the Bay Area with his superstar skills and regular-joe attitude.

So, naturally, he had to be the first to go.

Shipped out of town for Billy Owens and space to accommodate Don Nelson's up-tempo offense, Richmond became a staple at the All-Star game for the Sacramento Kings and essentially enabled their rise to power in the Western Conference.  He'd finish his career as one of seven men to average at least 21 points for the first 10 years of his career and retired with a championship ring, courtesy of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Golden State, after good first-returns on the decision to part ways, went the other direction.  And arguably have yet to recover.

Karma's a sneaky little cuss, ain't it?

5.  Chris Mullin—No. 7 pick in 1985

Since become the Golden State Warriors, our guys haven't seen a ton of success.  What success they have experienced has been dulled by overwhelming periods of pure incompetence.

But there was a stretch back in the early 1990s where the Warriors were a sight to behold and a gauntlet on the court to be navigated carefully.  On a yearly basis.

The first piece of that eventual pretty picture arrived via the 1985 draft in the form of Chris Mullin.

Things wouldn't get off to a perfect start—Mullin would pair effectively with Eric "Sleepy" Floyd on the court, but his drinking habits meshed with other off-court issues popping up in the Golden State lockerroom.  The toxic situation would come to a head and then be defused with the sweet-shooting lefty surviving the purge.

The organization would add Richmond, then Hardaway, and ultimately decide it had too much of a good thing before detonating the whole shebang in pursuit of Chris Webber.

Oops.

4.  Nate Thurmond—No. 3 pick in 1963

Any stud good enough to earn All-Rookie honors while playing in Wilt Chamberlain's shadow deserves mention.  For Nate the Great, it's only an introduction.

For two seasons, between 1966 and 1968, Thurmond would average 21.3 points and 22.0 rebounds—averages surpasses by only two men in Association history (Chamberlain and Bill Russell).  He packed his career with so many feats and accolades, his name can be found in the Hall of Fame as well as on the NBA 50th Anniversary Team.

Thurmond even made his contribution to the Warriors' legacy of trading away historic achievement.

In 1974, while making his debut for the Chicago Bulls, the Great became the first man in NBA history to record a quadruple double by tallying 22 points, 14 rebounds, 13 assists, and 12 blocked shots against the Atlanta Hawks.

Just another ex-Warrior, doing work.

3. Todd Fuller—No. 11 pick in 1996

In reality, the Warrior franchise hasn't been too guilty of outrageous embarrassment on Draft Day.  Guys like Joe Barry Carroll and Chris Washburn get a lot of run as draft busts, for good reason.

But check the 1980 draft that saw Carroll go No. 1 as well as the 1986 version that saw Washburn taken at No. 3.  There's more talent in the '80 pool, but still, only Kevin McHale is a really unforgivable whiff and that's in hindsight (which includes a career full of unpredictably bizarre decisions for Joe Barry).

The '86 draft is just plain fugly so it doesn't matter Washburn's ability went up his nose.

In 1996 though?  The Warriors didn't just step in it, they jumped in.  With both feet.

In their defense, there were also five other teams that passed on Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Peja Stojakovic, and Jermaine O'Neal with basically nothing to show for it.

However, those five teams all got more than Todd Fuller.  Even the Cleveland Cavaliers have to be happy with Vitaly Potapenko by comparison.

The dude with an Applied Mathematics degree from North Carolina State shed the Warrior uniform for good following the 1997-98 season and left town for Utah, then Charlotte, and then Miami.  The NBA coughed him from its ranks following the 2000-01 slate and Fuller hasn't been back.

Now, he has to be the only former NBA player currently making his living tutoring in and advising on mathematics.

2.  Rick Barry— No. 2 pick in 1965

Whether you like Barry or not, and most people don't seem to like the prickly former pro, he was a damn good basketball player.  Furthermore, he saw a lot of his best years in a Warrior uniform.

Of course, his relationship with the franchise is about as smooth as that with the fans.

After being tabbed second overall, Barry would win the 1965-66 NBA Rookie of the Year Award and then lead the team to the Finals after the next season.  The ultimately unsuccessful run deep into the playoffs triggered a dispute over compensation that eventually sent the granny-style free-thrower to American Basketball Association purgatory for four years.

Barry would return to the now-Golden State Warriors and help them to their only championship (in the 1974-75 campaign) since moving to California.

To this day, Rick Barry is the most successful Warrior draft pick who shared the height of that success with the organization.  That's good for second on this list.

1.  Wilt Chamberlain—territorial pick in 1959

You can argue this one's a cop-out because it came well before the Warriors arrived in the Bay Area—they were in Philadelphia when they nabbed Mr. 20,000.  But I say a franchise's history is a franchise's history i.e. its story isn't chained to a particular city or name so the Stilt's debut belongs to the Warriors.

Back in those days, teams were gifted certain players based on local popularity cultivated during college days.  Naturally, since the big fella played his college ball as a Kansas Jayhawk, Philly claimed him as its own...wait, what?

I'll give you, the wise reader, some facts and leave it in your hands:

(A) Chamberlain was from the City of Brotherly Love; (B) he first became popular there as a high schooler; (C) there was no NBA footprint in Kansas at the time (D) Warrior owner Eddie Gottlieb was a founding father of the Association; and (E) never before or since did a player go to a team based on pre-college territorial considerations.

Whatever the true reasoning, the windfall went wonderfully for the Philadelphia-San Francisco-Golden State body of work.

The Stilt would burst onto the scene by winning the 1959-60 NBA Most Valuable Player Award as well as its Rookie of the Year.  During the 1961-62 season, Arnold Schwarzenegger's co-star in Conan the Destroyer averaged 50.4 points, 25.7 rebounds, and registered his infamous 100-point game for the eventual-Golden State club.

That same year, Chamberlain averaged 48.5 minutes per game.  A regulation-NBA game is 48 minutes long—maybe Wilt wasn't lying about the 20 grand...

From there, the tale of the Warriors and the Stilt sours considerably.

The team would move to San Francisco, the City would apparently not love Chamberlain, financial trouble would ensue, and the Warriors would begin their tradition of shipping their most remarkable talent out the door—only to see it achieve a new level of greatness in another uniform.

Wilt Chamberlain was the most irresistible force of nature selected by the Warriors and could have been their ticket to immortality.  Instead, he played the part for another franchise.

And that's why he sits atop the list—the Warriors established a pattern with the Stilt and they've stuck to it.  For 50 years.

Which means some other team should really be enjoying the seventh pick from the 2009 draft in the near future...

**www.pva.org**