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

30 worst No. 1 overall picks in league history: 27. Jimmy Walker

Stats:

• 16.7 points
• 2.7 rebounds
• 3.5 assists

In the 1994 NBA Draft, Michigan star and Fab Five member Jalen Rose was drafted 13th overall and went on to have a long NBA career. 27 years earlier, his father Jimmy Walker led the way in the 1967 NBA Draft, going first overall to the Detroit Pistons.

Walker, a Boston native, went to Providence and absolutely dazzled the nation with his scoring prowess. He averaged 23 points per game as a junior, then blew off the ceiling averaging 30 points per game as a senior for the Friars, including a 50-point masterpiece in Madison Square Garden.

That display of bucket-getting led Walker to go first overall to the Pistons (he was also taken first overall by the Indiana Pacers in the American Basketball Association). In an interesting quirk, the New Orleans Saints of the NFL also drafted him, despite a lack of a football background, with the final pick of the 1967 Draft. He went first in one draft and last in another.

Walker had a number of standout seasons for the Pistons, averaging 16.1 points per game across five seasons in Detroit. He was named an All-Star in 1970 and 1972, the two seasons in his career that he averaged over 20 points per game. Struggles with his weight and declining athleticism plagued him as he reached his 30s, and despite dropping 15.7 points for the Kansas City Kings in 1976 it would be his last season.

Should have picked: Walt Frazer (5th); Earl Monroe (2nd)