NBA Draft: 30 Worst No. 1 overall picks in league history (Updated 2023)

30 worst No. 1 overall picks in league history: 21. Austin Carr

Stats:

• 15.4 points
• 2.9 rebounds

Austin Carr was a walking bucket, one of the greatest scoring guards in NCAA history. The Washington D.C. native traveled to Indiana to attend Notre Dame, where he set nearly every school scoring record imaginable. He averaged 34.5 points per game, and a record and mind-boggling 50 points per game in the NCAA Tournament. He still owns the record for the most points scored in an NCAA Tournament game, dropping 61 points on Ohio in 1970.

After three years of scoring in college, he was the first overall pick of the fledgling Cleveland Cavaliers in the 1971 NBA Draft. He shot out of the gate, scoring 21.2 points per game as a rookie. Over the next three seasons, he kept the scoring up, earning his first (and ultimately only) All-Star berth. In his fourth season, the young Cavaliers franchise was on its way to its first-ever playoff berth before Carr suffered a significant knee injury; Cleveland missed the playoffs by just a game.

Although Carr returned and did help drive that playoff run in subsequent years, his scoring ability was never the same again. In 247 career games prior to the injury he scored 4,964 points (20.1 per game average); in 435 career games after the injury, he scored just 5,509, a 12.7 points per game average.

Carr played nine of his ten seasons with the Cavaliers, before splitting his final season between the Dallas Mavericks and Washington Bullets. He ended up logging just 18 career playoff games and totaling 32.9 win shares for his career.

Should have picked: Artis Gilmore (117th)