NBA Draft: Re-drafting the historic 2009 NBA Draft

The 2009 NBA Draft is far in the rearview.

It’s been years since the Minnesota Timberwolves used their two lottery picks to pick two point guards not named Stephen Curry. Over a decade years since the Oklahoma City Thunder made their first draft selection since moving from Seattle. And over 10 years since the Memphis Grizzlies altered the course of their franchise by selecting…Hasheem Thabeet!

It was a draft that fans remember as much for who teams didn’t select, compared to who other teams did pick.

Of course, it’s easy to retroactively ridicule a lot of these selections knowing what we know about these players now, but it shows how precarious betting the fortunes of your franchise on unproven young players, no matter how much planning and scouting goes into the process.

That said, this draft featured a lot of high-end talent, though not as much as some of the more hallowed drafts in NBA history. Going in, Oklahoma Sooners forward Blake Griffin was the consensus No. 1 overall pick, but with the likes of Curry, James Harden and Spanish passing prodigy Ricky Rubio available, there was plenty of reason for optimism if your team possessed a lottery pick.

For better or worse, the athletes in this draft accelerated the inevitability that was the modern, 3-point friendly game. This trend towards accepting the value of shots behind the arc took roughly two decades to come to fruition. That metamorphosis propelled some members of this class to superstardom while rendering others relics of the past.

So what would this draft look like today with the knowledge of each players’ career arcs? That’s what this re-draft hopes to answer.