NBA 2004 Redraft: Picking between high school and college champions

While 2003 is the draft everyone looks back at, 2004 also had a debate at the top. Should we redraft the high school prospect or the NCAA Champion?

As we go further back in time for a redraft, some things get much easier while others become almost impossible. We debate for months on end who should be the number one pick and then you look back and it turns out one of them should not have been in the conversation at all.

One becomes a future Hall of Famer and the other becomes a solid role player. If you are looking for an example, look no further than the 2004 NBA Draft.

Many of the players in this draft have played their entire careers already, making it much easier to rank them in terms of where they should go in this redraft.

There is very little debate over the first overall pick in this draft, which makes it quite different from the situation at the time of the draft. Hindsight over the majority of a career makes that much clearer.

On the other hand, the back end of the first round is filled with guys who never quite made it and second-rounder selections who had potential that went unrealized. When it comes to players like that, we will be looking at what could have been more so than what was.

With the first pick in the 2004 NBA Redraft, the Orlando Magic select…