What If These 10 Recent NBA Draft Busts Panned Out?

As long as there have been drafts, there have been bad picks. In basketball especially, where a player's performance is that much more influential to the team's fate, there are countless guys who've been drafted high only to make NBA franchises wish they had that pick back.

Yet there was a reason they were picked in the first place—teams, scouts and reporters saw something in these guys and had expectations of them becoming a certain kind of player down the road. Things simply ended up not going according to plan, and we look back wondering what we ever saw in these players.

The question is, what if everything did go according to plan? This is a list of the top 10 "what ifs."

A few conditions apply: This list covers more modern draft picks, from the '90s onward, and will only include players drafted in the top five. 

This eliminates such names as Sam Bowie, Len Bias, Pervis Ellison, Sharone Wright and DerMarr Johnson, among countless others.

Honorable (dishonorable?) mention

- Joe Smith ("career role player" doesn't fit a No. 1 pick very well)

- Marcus Fizer (played like a bull, took instruction like a bull)

- Stromile Swift (all flash and no substance)

- Shelden Williams (deserved to go fifth in the second round)

- Greg Oden (still has time to turn it around)

10. Shaun Livingston

Personally, I love Livingston; he is definitely a serviceable player, albeit somewhat of a journeyman at this point in his career. He's not a failure as a player, but considering how high he was drafted and the the expectations for his development, his career so far qualifies him as a bust.

It also bears noting that Livingston's placement on this list has nothing to do with his skills or his quality as a player; it's all because of injuries.

One injury, to be more specific: a knee injury involving the most gruesome damage to a human joint this writer has seen outside of a Saw flick.

Even before the injury, Livingston was coming along slowly, so he didn't have much momentum to build on after his lengthy convalescence. As a result, he's blended in with the field, and people have pretty much given up on the idea of him ever being a star player.

Had he not been derailed by the knee (and his generally frail physique), Livingston could have been a top quarterback in this league, a guy who, at 6'7", had a shot at reinventing the big point guard mold.

His playmaking skills, properly developed and coupled with his size and speed, would have made him a yearly All-Star candidate and a fan favorite. In the process, who knows what the Clippers' fortunes would have been? Perhaps that 2006 playoff run wouldn't be such an isolated spike in their track record.

As a result, their odds of ever landing Blake Griffin would have been slim to none...

9. Darius Miles

Darius Miles entered the league with a small bang in 2000 as a lanky big kid who was just a little less subject to gravity than everyone else. This landed him on many highlight reels, and the consensus was he should be a dangerous man one day.

Then his profile dropped when he didn't have the post-rookie boom normally seen from a guy with his potential. Soon, there were mumblings of lax attitude towards training and conditioning. He didn't bulk up, he didn't hone his game and he pretty much stagnated as his youthful bounciness left him.

Eventually, injuries took their toll and made Miles history.

For a third overall pick—even in one of the weakest drafts ever—expectations were much higher than he ever remotely achieved. People envisioned a guy with just the right combination of length and light feet to give defenses persistent headaches.

He also seemed to play with a certain ease out on the court; that was probably expected to translate into savvy for the non-scoring aspects of the game.

Basically, if all had gone according to plan, Darius Miles would have been a poor man's Scottie Pippen and a dark horse All-Star.

8. Darko Milicic

You knew this slide was coming up eventually.

Hindsight being 20/20, the consensus is that Joe Dumars had a major brain fart when he drafted Darko Milicic before Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade et al. What gets overlooked is that every mock draft at the time had him in the top five, and there was no particular sense of shock when Detroit's selection was announced.

It also bears noting that after being drafted, Milicic was a victim of the Pistons' depth at his position, as he was immediately buried on the bench through no fault of his own.

In fact, he only saw action during garbage time in wins, earning him the nickname "The Human Victory Cigar."

The minutes were so scarce that when they did come, Milicic often played jittery, made unnecessary mistakes and generally never got to show people what he could do.

The plan was supposedly to develop him into a core player, but that never happened, and Darko left Motown with bust written all over him.

As far as his offensive skills, one gets the feeling they actually regressed over the years from lack of play. Among other things, one reason for his high draft stock was his three-point range, something we have never seen out of him since he went pro.

Some people actually said he was in the same mold as Dirk Nowitzki. Go ahead and chuckle.

If Milicic had played real minutes—or even started—after being drafted, he could have had a very different career path. Undoubtedly, there would have been the customary rocky start experienced by players of his type, but ultimately he had the building blocks to be a tougher, more versatile Memo Okur (who also took minutes from him in Detroit).

7. Jonathan Bender

When you think Jonathan Bender, you think bad knees, which is unfortunate considering his game was all about getting off the floor.

When the Pacers parted with Antonio Davis—who, as I recall, had been quite valuable to them—and brought in Bender on draft night 1999, they thought they had the next big thing.

He was a bit of an athletic freak; there was some buzz at the time surrounding how easily he got above the rim, and at 6'11", people saw potential at the pivot if he could just bulk up. Coming straight out of high school, he also had that much more of a head start on his NBA development.

If not for the injuries, Bender could have evolved into a Larry Nance-type player (perhaps peaking at 20-10), a highlight-reel mainstay and one of the faces of the "Where Amazing Happens" ad campaign. He also would have played more than 262 career games...

The jury's out on whether the Pacers would have been remarkably better for it, but it most certainly would have helped their chances when they ran into those pesky Nets and Pistons.

6. Jay Williams

Jay Williams had All-Star potential to be certain, but unfortunately for himself and the Bulls, he did not have all-star judgment.

After having an unremarkable but encouraging rookie season, Williams took his motorcycle out for a spin—a contractual no-no in itself—without a helmet or the necessary license and proceeded to crash it into a street lamp. The results were ultimately career-ending.

Had he chosen to commute on four wheels like everybody else, Williams gave no reason to temper the expectations that saw him drafted second overall a year earlier. Physically, he was a well-balanced blend of good speed, decent strength and educated feet.

With some experience to build his court savvy, he could have been very similar to another Williams by the name of Deron—or rather, Deron would be similar to him. He wasn't a stellar shooter, but range is one of those things you trust a rook will acquire with time.

With Williams at the helm, there is no telling how the Bulls would have evolved from there, but odds are they'd have played decently enough to have very different results in the subsequent drafts.

All things remaining equal in the 2008 lottery, they probably would have been secure enough at the point to pass on Derrick Rose. Many people forget that Rose's draft stock was only slightly higher than Michael Beasley's at the time.

The Bulls would likely have ended up with B-Easy, and Derrick Rose would be in Miami right now. Who knows what the Heat would look like today...

5. Kwame Brown

To this day, I maintain my opinion that the worst thing that ever happened to Kwame Brown was playing with Michael Jordan.

Knowing what we know about Jordan's merciless competitive streak, the nasty side of it manifests itself when you're dealing with a young kid out of high school who needs more nurturing than trial by fire. Meanwhile, MJ has never been accused of being patient or gentle with his teammates.

With Jordan constantly on his back, Brown had no room for error, which a prospect is normally afforded. Even more unfortunate, something scouts had apparently missed: his small, error-prone hands. These simply contributed to more mistakes, more heat from His Airness and shattered confidence.

Assuming Brown played under anyone else (except maybe Larry Brown), he might have had the leeway for a little trial and error, which can't possibly be a bad thing.

One doubts he would ever have justified being a No. 1 pick, but ideally, he could have been a big, scoring power forward who did his best work facing the basket. Rebounding and shot-blocking would probably never have been his strong suit with those hands, but his size and vertical would have kept his numbers respectable.

Take away Amar'e Stoudemire's quick feet and big mitts and you have a good idea of Kwame Brown's best-case scenario.

4. Nikoloz Tskitishvili

I'd have "Skita" atop the list if I didn't think you need potential and high expectations to be qualified as a bust, neither of which I think he ever had. That said, he remains one of the most badly wasted top-five picks in NBA history.

The pick came out of nowhere and seems to have been motivated by a rebuilding team's belief in the "when in doubt, draft big" principle, which still doesn't explain how they passed on Nêné and Amare Stoudemire (pre-apostrophe).

Knowing nothing about Tskitishvili prior to being drafted, and having seen absolutely nothing out of him since, it's extremely difficult to imagine what kind of player he would have been had he developed his full potential (if he had any).

Under the right circumstances, one would imagine a serviceable backup center making a contribution on a winning team, perhaps sporting a career high of eight points and two blocks during an injury-shortened season that didn't last long enough for those numbers to taper off.

He could have been Jim McIlvaine. We certainly all missed out...

3. Adam Morrison

Adam Morrison was already notorious for unflattering reasons when he was drafted: his Chris Bosh-like display of lacrimal prowess after blowing that UCLA game. Still, this didn't change his rep as a deadly shooter who might make one team's offense very hard to guard.

That team was Charlotte, who liked him enough to spend a third overall pick on him, but obviously the expected results never came. Morrison's shooting touch was barely seen again, and after averaging just under 12 points on 37 percent shooting as a rookie, neither was he.

Morrison's personality—some would say his lack thereof—may be what hurt him most. Sure, getting traded to the Lakers didn't help his development, what with sharing scarce minutes with the likes of Sasha Vujacic, but in the end his unassuming (i.e. unassertive) nature may be what cost him that battle.

With a little more aggressiveness—no, a lot more—and a little more burn to calibrate his NBA range, Morrison might have at least justified being a lottery pick by becoming one of the league's premier three-point specialists.

Picture Jeff Hornacek with a goofy 'stache.

2. Shawn Bradley

Bradley is another player who performed decently (i.e. over-achieved) before evolving into a failure. Bradley has one 20-20 game to his name (points and rebounds, of course) and even had three triple-doubles (including two in a row) while playing for the Nets.

As of spring 1996, for all his flaws, it appeared as though Bradley was on the right track.

Unfortunately, the idea of Bradley as a reliable scorer was scrapped within three years, and soon the excitement over his wiry 7'6" frame wore off as it became obvious it was only useful for plugging the middle (at which Bradley didn't even particularly excel).

Eventually, Bradley's size, combined with his unassertive attitude on the court, resulted in players wanting to attack him at the basket, making him the most dunked on shot-blocker perhaps ever, rendering him somewhat of a laughingstock.

So what did the 76ers see in his future when they used the second pick on him in 1993? Setting aside the aforementioned delusions of offensive potential, Bradley could have been the next Mark Eaton—a towering defensive presence that made guys reconsider even looking at the paint.

By now, he could very likely have been at the top of the all-time blocks list and ideally would have learned to rebound like somebody his size ought to.

Unfortunately, the main trait he shared with Eaton was that his low-post game matched his face. Eaton looked like a caveman; Bradley looked like a choir boy.

1. Michael Olowokandi

Candyman was a movie about a guy with a hook for a hand that scared a lot of people.

"Kandiman" was a seven-foot center that scared absolutely nobody and often played like had two hooks for hands.

Right off the bat, people acknowledged what a long shot it was that Olowokandi would ever live up to his draft position, but the Clippers had the first pick and couldn't resist the lure of a possible franchise center.

At the time, it was a debatable but uncontroversial choice. In retrospect, the Clippers did with that pick precisely what the Clippers are famous for: They lost. His career-best stat line was 12 points and eight boards per game in a contract year.

Olowokandi's career before that was spent "having potential"; the rest of his career thereafter was spent "being a failure" and "warming a bench."

With nothing in particular to blame for Kandiman's stagnation except Kandiman himself, it's hard to set the bar high for him even under the most ideal circumstances. He was on a losing team, had a coaching staff set specifically to work on his game and wasn't facing any positional battles.

These factors should logically worked in his favor, but Olowokandi never made much of them. At the very least, he might have duplicated that 12-8 season more often. Maybe he could have maxed out at 15-11.

All told, there's just no escaping the bust label here.