The 30 most painful NBA Draft pass-ups since 2000

NBA Draft Mistake #3: Memphis drafting Hasheem Thabeet over Steph Curry.

The “Grit and Grind” Memphis Grizzlies were one of the better teams of the 2010s, but their ceiling remained limited after whiffing on a couple of high lottery picks. Most notably, 7’3 center Hasheem Thabeet. Thabeet was taken second in the 2009 NBA draft, ahead of future stars James Harden, Steph Curry, and DeMar DeRozan.

Landing any one of those players would have set the Grizzlies up to dominate the West, particularly had they drafted Curry, who terrorized Memphis as a member of the Golden State Warriors. Instead, they took Thabeet, who was a major project after having never played basketball until the age of 15. Even after three years at UConn, he was still relatively unpolished, though he had a knack for blocking shots.

Unfortunately, he never amounted to the defensive stopper that they hoped he could be, even after being sent to the G-League. That was a bad sign since he was the first top-three pick to ever be reassigned to the G-League, and it didn’t help. He lasted 113 games with Memphis before being traded for a real defensive stopper in Shane Battier.

In fact, they were so desperate to get off of Thabeet that they attached a first-round pick to move him. That was chasing a bad decision with another, and it cemented the Thabeet pick as one of the worst ever.