NBA Draft: 30 greatest draft picks in league history

Greatest NBA Draft pick in league history: Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls

There is little to be said about Michael Jeffrey Jordan that has not already been said. The North Carolina native was a star at the University of North Carolina under head coach Dean Smith, winning a title in 1982 and Player of the Year in 1984. When he slipped to No. 3 overall in the 1984 NBA Draft, the Chicago Bulls got one of the greatest values in the history of the NBA Draft.

Jordan was electric from the start, winning NBA Rookie of the Year and making an All-NBA team in his first season. Over the course of the 1980s, Chicago slowly built a contender around their high-flying, tongue-wagging, lunch-stealing guard. By 1991, the Bulls were ready, and Jordan led them to six titles in eight years.

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No player was as prolific scoring the basketball as Jordan, who led the league in scoring a whopping 10 times. No one-trick pony, Jordan was also a ballhawk on defense, making nine All-Defensive teams and even winning NBA Defensive Player of the Year in 1988.

Six titles also meant six NBA Finals MVP awards, to go along with his six regular-season NBA MVP trophies as well. 13 seasons with Chicago equaled 12 NBA All-Star selections and 11 All-NBA berths.

Jordan’s legacy to the Bulls was not simply trophies and titles, although those are heady enough. He also put red-and-black hats on the heads of every young person in the country, and across much of the world as well.

Everyone wanted to be a Bulls fan in the 1990s. He brought about a new wave of basketball culture, and he did it wearing a jersey that read “Chicago” on the front. The Bulls gained not only the greatest player of all time on the court, but off as well.

In the end Jordan’s unparalleled peak beats out Tim Duncan’s longevity, and both beat a player such as LeBron James or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who jumped teams. Yet what all these players illustrate is that the best route to a generation of success is to find such a star in the draft. Jordan was such a star, the greatest draft pick in NBA history.