A closer look back at the biggest and most intriguing what-if draft selections from the 1990s that would have altered NBA history.
No decade of basketball had a greater array of icons than the 1990s. It is widely regarded as the best era in the history of the NBA for the legends that played over the decade along with those that were just coming into the league.
The plethora of world-class, NBA-ready players coming in from the college ranks and even high school upped the competition much further than in the 1980s. It became more valuable to earn All-Star and All-NBA selections because of the hefty amount of top talents up and down the league during this era.
But not all teams acquired some of these future Hall of Fame talents over the draft. Some teams were cautious and decided not to take such a player and rather take their chances with a safer pick, which backfired on them.
Another group of teams simply did not do their pre-draft homework and completely missed out on the opportunity of drafting a player who could have changed the franchise for the better. And others did not have hope that such a player would push them into being a perennial contender, which they were later proven wrong of.
This all makes for intriguing what-if scenarios. Had a team decided to take one particular player over whom they ended up taking in the draft, how much would basketball in the 1990s and even into the 2000s change?
Many were considered, but here are the top five biggest and most fascinating what-if NBA Draft selections from the 1990s.