The NBA Draft is a moment of hope for so many franchises, their chance at turning the pain of losing into the balm of future success. Until each draft selection becomes a player, it is a source of hope, of mysterious promises. The first pick in the draft is a limitless well of that hope, a chance to take the very best available player and change a franchise around.
That hope is not baseless fancy; rather it comes from a long history of players taken first overall turning into superstars. 18 players taken first overall since Elgin Baylor in 1958 have been selected to the basketball Hall of Fame, and somewhere from four to nine active players are on trajectory to join them. The draft is far from a sure thing, but picking first gives you a chance at a franchise-defining superstar.
The number of first overall picks that pan out is long, and the number that absolutely bust — Anthony Bennett, Michael Olowokandi, Andrea Bargnani — is slim. For a stretch from Magic Johnson in 1979 to Tim Duncan in 1997, all but two top picks made at least one All-Star team in their careers, and nine players ended up in the Hall of Fame (and Chris Webber is still in the mix to make it ten).
Not all of the best players in NBA history went first overall, however. Michael Jordan famously went third in the 1984 NBA Draft. Bill Russell went second. Kevin Garnett was fifth, Stephen Curry seventh, Kobe Bryant 13th. Yet most lists of the top 10 players in NBA history will find at least half were chosen with that first pick.
Whittling down a list of the 30 best first overall picks
Turning 74 players from Clifton McNeely to Anthony Edwards into a list of 30 was a difficult task, but then lining them up in order was another. How do you compare Elgin Baylor, drafted in the 1950s and who never won a title, with someone like James Worthy, drafted in the 1980s and who won three titles but never as the top guy. Even more difficult was parsing out the elite even on this list, the top-10 all-time players. Then what do you do with a second-year player on a superstar trajectory like Zion Williamson?
In the end, we landed on the following list of 30 players, all selected first overall and all of whom put together exemplary careers. Although talented, we do apologize to Larry Johnson, Brad Daugherty, John Wall, Mychal Thompson, Andrew Bogut, Kenyon Martin, Glenn Robinson and Derrick Coleman who all missed the cut.
The list begins with an offensive savant who helped one of the greatest defenses in league history win a pair of titles.