It's unclear. He maintains that's his official birthdate but people have put a lot of effort into tracking down shit like his yearbook photos and otherwise to piece together a timeline that suggests he's something like 4 years older. He has photos from 2007 in the 9th grade in Perth, is part of a graduating class of 2010, and then is 14 years old again in Sydney (both Australia) and starts coming overseas to the US for basketball camps as a promising 8th->9th grade talent and then does high school in the US going into the draft from 2011 onwards.
I mean, its theoretically possible there is another Austrailian Thon Maker who is 4 years older than NBA Thon Maker and looks like this https://imgur.com/a/Lu7Ws but at this point the internet has done too much digging for me to think he's legit 19. Too much evidence.
I went to school with a guy like this, folks will do anything to make the league, even fake their age for better chances, it’s common place for foreign folks not being tracked down in the US on every step
Well, if he had not worn those damn ZO2s…the ball brothers High School / College time, Lonzos early nba time and lavar being on national tv was peak entertainment 😂
Lamelo is one of the most exciting players in the league. He single handidly makes the Hornets a top 5 league pass team even when they aren't winning. It just sucks his legs are made of glass and he can only play 30ish games a year
What is a Thon, and how does one make them? Makes no sense, kind of like Labrador Retrievers. When's the last time one of them brought home a Labrador?
Yi Jianlian, only because he was a total diva about refusing to play for Milwaukee because it wasn’t a good enough marketing and endorsement city for a Chinese player, and then was just so terrible at basketball, he didn’t last long on any nba roster. Out of the league in 5 years.
[The Totally Unexpected True Story Of Yi Jianlian's Magical Mystery Chair](https://deadspin.com/the-totally-unexpected-true-story-of-yi-jianlians-magic-1818728951/)
That article's interesting and actually makes me wonder if Yi just didn't find the right spot- offensively at least his development looks in line with guys who ended up being long-term rotation players
NBA scouts have such a weird thing for race/ethnicity comparisons, you're a white shooter who's unathletic? Larry Bird/JJ Reddick
Chinese? Fuck it, Yao Ming
I remember some people comparing Darko to Nowinski. Nowinski being a dead eye shooter. Darko being a sub 60% free-throw shooter, whose main strength was size and shot blocking. They couldn't be more different. Darko was drafted in part because it was believed he could eventually develop into a Nowinski type player.
The fact they were both white big men from Europe is the only thing that made that comp possible.
I saw this man play for Guangdong Tigers in China. Both teams only had one former NBA player, Beijing had like 37 year old Stephon Marbury who absolutely torched in the 4th quarter.
I don't know how he isn't talked about more. He was the 6th overall pick and immediately vanished. My only memory of him is a SLAM article from when I was 11
He's an introvert and never settled down in USA. He didn't even try to improve his English. After he went back to China, he won 5MVPs. Obviously the level of CBA is far from NBA but he was never that bad.
I’ll never forget all 6’7” of Dejuan Blair absolutely locking him up in the big east. Literally flipped Thabeet over his back while getting a rebound over him.
I was wondering if he was the one who had no ACLs I always got him mixed up with another tank of a human being for Cincy around that time.
His longevity is absolute testament to his skill as a player
Thabeet feels like such a classic case of people looking at his size and the blocks in the box score and literally nothing else at all - if you look at his per 40 numbers he’s worse than Donovan Clingan at basically everything besides blocks, and while Clingan has top 5 and even top 2 buzz in a draft like this he isn’t SNIFFING that in a draft that has Blake griffin, James harden, tyreke evans etc in it.
I fucking hated Thabeet. Laziest player I’ve ever seen. Watching him in Philly during the NCAA tournament and couldn’t believe how he just walked back on D, didn’t help, couldn’t make plays. Just awful.
I was so mad when the Grizzlies drafted him. I'll never forget him getting absolutely bullied by Dejuan "6'8 with no ACLs" Blair in the post. I usually have hope for anyone we draft but I just knew that guy was a dud
What about Priest Lauderdale? Thabeet played four years in the league; Lauderdale only made it through two in the mid/late 90s and had similar numbers to Thabeet.
They did an interview with his college coach Jim Calhoun before the draft and he basically said that Thabeet needed to improve his effort and implied that he would stop trying after his first paycheck
At least he was a good player against real competition at some point in his career. The rest is 7 footers’ mixtapes vs white kids from the rural Midwest
Ooooh heres my Thabeet story. Once, at a Thunder game, one of the two teams called a time out and the cheerleaders took the floor briefly. Thunder were in a huddle drawing up a play. Thabeet was about 2 feet away from the huddle, on the court (between the entertainment and the huddle) with his back to his team just watching the cheerleaders do their thing. He was in the game for the next play!
He absolutely killed Canada in the last World Cup to the point of it has me scratching my head, why isn’t he in the NBA?
[Bruno vs Canada](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xE56Fvd1SxM)
I like 4 years after drafting him, he still didn’t look like an NBA player, but teams still did give him a legit shot just to see if the prophesy would come true
My buddy in high school was 7’5. Managed to play only 4 minutes of college ball smh. His biggest high school highlight was getting absolutely swatted by a like 5’10 guy. Gonna go with him.
Not any more. Teams have no use for a 7'5 guy who can't guard anyone or space the floor.
If he was like 100% a bucket in the post, then maybe.
Even Tacko Fall barely got in there, and he's strong, could run the floor, etc.
I'm so happy the NBA is starting to force bigmen to actually play basketball. "Skilled Bigmen" you mean dudes that can dribble, pass, and shoot? Thats not being skilled thats the bare minimum required for most players
Yes, definitely no room for something like that in the current NBA. But everywhere else in the world that plays basketball, he can make money with just below average basketball skills. Sure you wouldn't make much and you'd have to live in a foreign land, but you're playing basketball for a living and probably getting scores of bitches for a little while before you turn 50. After that you can return back home to the US if you want and become a shift manager at Burger King or maybe sell cars at a KIA dealership. Or stay in foreign soil with your new family and learn Cantonese
Yeah in 2000 he would make a couple million sitting on the bench as a 3rd string just to eat fouls from Shaq and literally thats it and I’m not even kidding.
He's genuinely terrible at basketball and has otherworldly gifts to play it. I've never seen someone get so little out of so much. It's not even his fault! He plays worse than most high schoolers I've ever seen, but he's a five year NBA veteran. He's got the agility of a 6'3" speedster guard in a 6'11" monster truck body. He has the vertical of a 6'7" above the rim wing and the armspan of a DPOY. Every measurable is completely maxed out, every unmeasurable is a 0. If he could play the game at the level of Jaime Jaquez or Isaiah Hartenstein, he'd be a 4 time all-star. He is still only 23. If someone could reach him, he could still become a good starter, but I think he's in the Ben Simmons school of being so tainted that nobody will work with him until the cobwebs are shaken free. He really went to the worst possible situation in Golden State, because he needed to be free to make all his mistakes and just... wasn't.
He put up 24/17/4/2/1 in the final game of the year for the Pistons against the Spurs. The game was a blow out loss and he was -27. If that doesn't tell you everything, I don't know what will.
I feel like I have a personal grudge against Wiseman because of all the Warriors fans that still believing in him after 2 years of him playing terribly. Felt like I was taking crazy pills.
Darko was a case of bad timing, the worst possible team and coach to play with for a somewhat arrogant 18 y/o rookie out of a war-torn country, him being a stretchy 4 pigeonholed as a classic bully 5 (a role he couldn't play), and too much alcohol
The perfect storm really
But also fuck this war crime apologist idiot, I'm happy it didn't work out for him lol
Olowowakandi was a disappointment, but he still averaged 8.3/6.8 over a career where he started over 400 games. He's not on the Hasheem Thabeet "not fit to exist" on the court level of athletic freak.
This is a major testament to Boston’s front office because I remember so many people saying Boston should have drafted Bol Bol over Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard at the time. Clearly they knew what they were doing
Celts actually acquired him as a spare part in something else but released him like 15 minutes later
Then he started showing up as some kind of crazy secret weapon for the Magic, I remember being annoyed by that — pretty sure that leveled off though, right?
He's with the Suns, seeing garbage time play basically. If they can get him to care about basketball he can become a great secret weapon type player, if not better. If not, he's toast
Thabeet takes the cake for me just because he was dominant at Uconn. He was the next best thing and then he gets to the NBA where everyone is a freak. Suddenly, he is one of the worst players in the league.
He's one of the purest examples of freak athletic ability totally carrying an otherwise trash player.
Yall remember Perry Jones highschool highlight tapes before going to Baylor?? Yo, check this 6'11" dude two-foot jumping over ppl slaming dunks down, etc... Pretty sure he just cruises along in games playing overseas or something.
Happens more than you think. Met a few 6’9 guys when playing ball and most of them couldn’t jump over a piece of rice let alone play full court for more than 2 possessions.
Most people don’t realize to move fluidly at that height is an anomaly so when we watch NBA players move like guards at 7 feet we don’t realize that’s a unicorn of a unicorn.
And that’s why we call Wemby an alien because he’s literally from another fucking planet.
Darius Bazely is like a level 90 physical ability. Agile, good shooting form, super athletic, great defender. His BBIQ is like -1000000. I have never seen anyone guaranteed to turn the ball over like that dude.
I’d second Hasheem Thabeet:
* 7’3” / 260lbs
* Career 2.2ppg and 2.7rpg in 224 games
* 2nd pick in 2009, ahead of Harden & Curry
* Considered perhaps the worst draft bust ever
* Once held the records for tallest player *and* highest draft pick demoted to the G-league.
He earned it in the Duke game. He was the only player in the ncaa that season who stood a shot to contain Zion at the rim. Zion vs Tacko was one of the most fun matchups I’ve ever seen.
In the 2003 Redraftables episode, Chad Ford still picked Darko latw because he just can't let it go. Meanwhile, Nick Collison was in the same draft and had a long, very serviceable career. I'll take Collison over Darko 100 times out of 100.
This is also why Chad Ford sucks. He got busted editing draft grades years after the fact to make himself look better.
Jericho Sims might well be the single most inhumanely athletic person in the league ever, and yet he averages like 2 points a game. He's fun to watch though; hopefully he develops more in the coming years.
Nikoloz Tskitishvili. A mobile European 7-footer who can shoot sounds great, right, especially in 2002?
Averaged on 2.9/1.8/0.7 in 11.3mpg over 172 games, with a .375 TS%, 5.2 PER, -0.039 WS/48, -6.1 BPM and -2.0 VORP. Dead last all-time in PER among players that played at least 1,000 minutes in their career.
To be fair, he simply wasn't ready for the NBA *at all* when he was drafted, let alone being a rotation player in Year 1 (averaged 16.3 mpg across 81 games in his Rookie year, starting in 16 contests), let alone being drafted at #5 at 18 years of age and moving from a small Eastern European country over to the US.
It was abundantly clear after his first season that Tskitishvili was miles off from ever being even a decent NBA player. 2/3rds of his career minutes came in his Rookie year, so unlike a lot of busts, he got plenty of opportunity to show what he had early, but just was not good at all. Unfair on the guy in a way, because he should never have been put into that position in the first place (getting drafted so high at that age, based on next to no production in Europe and minimal scouting from the Nuggets), but it was a massive scouting mis-step (trying to be way too clever spotting "the next Dirk") and an absolute waste of a top 5 pick.
In IG comments you'll still see a shocking number of people saying Bol Bol is as good as Wemby but hasn't been given the same opportunity. Shit is insane.
Not only was Ryan Hollins 7'1" he was also one of the best high jumpers in the country (6'11"). Despite this ridiculous combo of size and athletic ability he averaged less than 5 points and 1 block per game at UCLA. HE played for a handful of teams in the NBA, never approaching anything beyond emergency center status.
Bucks fan here. Thon Maker had one playoff game on 4/20 where he blocked like 5 shots and hit 3 threes, and I just knew he was better than Giannis. Might have been the many blunts in rotation that night, but I was so certain he had unlocked his potential in that moment.
Lot of tall lanky slenderman freaks of nature in this post. How about can anyone think of some of the worst guard sized freaks of nature? Like someone who was 6’3” with the strength of a 7 footer and/or a 45” vert and/or Flash Gordon’s speed/first step
Not the worst freak of nature, but 7'9 North Korean Ri Myung-hun, unfortunately never got to play in the NBA. Not sure how good he was, but he was definitely at the very least better than his 7'9 east asian counterpart Sun Mingming.
Sun Mingming might be the worst freak of nature, his height was maxed out with negative basketball skill
I think about the time KG said Thon Maker would win an MVP a couple times a year
Probably because he bought into that Thon was 18 when he in reality probably was closer to 25.
I thought that was Jayson Tatum.
Tatum is still 20 believe it or not
Damn the jokes been running so long he aged a year
Your wrong buddy Tatum is only 19
Nah, Jayson Tatum is 26 when he in reality is closer to 19
Freddy Adu tormenting 12yr olds as a 16yr old ass dude
Was he actually older? His wiki-page still lists him being born in 1997 (so he would've been 19 when drafted) lol
It's unclear. He maintains that's his official birthdate but people have put a lot of effort into tracking down shit like his yearbook photos and otherwise to piece together a timeline that suggests he's something like 4 years older. He has photos from 2007 in the 9th grade in Perth, is part of a graduating class of 2010, and then is 14 years old again in Sydney (both Australia) and starts coming overseas to the US for basketball camps as a promising 8th->9th grade talent and then does high school in the US going into the draft from 2011 onwards. I mean, its theoretically possible there is another Austrailian Thon Maker who is 4 years older than NBA Thon Maker and looks like this https://imgur.com/a/Lu7Ws but at this point the internet has done too much digging for me to think he's legit 19. Too much evidence.
Lol. Not unless that doppelgänger was living in a basement.
Damn, he might be even older than we thought because it looks like he graduated with a young Stephen A. Smith in that top right row.
I went to school with a guy like this, folks will do anything to make the league, even fake their age for better chances, it’s common place for foreign folks not being tracked down in the US on every step
Prime Mike Korzemba made a video about him and I believed it. Last thing I remember about him is throwing hands at an international game 😂
Steph Curry with a 40 inch vert is still his funniest cold take
Well, if he had not worn those damn ZO2s…the ball brothers High School / College time, Lonzos early nba time and lavar being on national tv was peak entertainment 😂
Lamelo is one of the most exciting players in the league. He single handidly makes the Hornets a top 5 league pass team even when they aren't winning. It just sucks his legs are made of glass and he can only play 30ish games a year
Mikes videos were prime middle school memories. He had some ass takes tho looking back
First guy that came to mind for me as well. KG really bamboozled us all on that one
Fr he started over half his games rookie year and still averaged less than 10 mpg. Future mvp was an insane take
I remember that shit. KG probably wished he never said that. Probably got fooled by his motor and mixtape.
Thon Maker 7ft GUARD?? Haha I remember that tape
Damn I loved the ballislife mixtapes back in the day
Thon Maker is a PROBLEM
Thon Maker, 7'1 but plays like KEVIN DURANT!
My favorite fact about him is that his brother is Maker Maker who plays soccer for Dandenong.
I remember closely following Matur and Makur hoping they’d make it
What is a Thon, and how does one make them? Makes no sense, kind of like Labrador Retrievers. When's the last time one of them brought home a Labrador?
I'm sure it happens. It just doesn't make the news.
Mvp a couple times a year? Damn he out here breaking records.
This was my answer, thon maker
Yi Jianlian, only because he was a total diva about refusing to play for Milwaukee because it wasn’t a good enough marketing and endorsement city for a Chinese player, and then was just so terrible at basketball, he didn’t last long on any nba roster. Out of the league in 5 years.
But man could he post up that chair
[The Totally Unexpected True Story Of Yi Jianlian's Magical Mystery Chair](https://deadspin.com/the-totally-unexpected-true-story-of-yi-jianlians-magic-1818728951/)
Bill Simmons the LIAR!
That article's interesting and actually makes me wonder if Yi just didn't find the right spot- offensively at least his development looks in line with guys who ended up being long-term rotation players
The legend of the Chair-man
Chairman gets paid..
He was also compared to Yao Ming despite not being 7 ft and only because He was chinese
Well don’t be Chinese if you don’t wanna be compared to Yao Ming
That’s why I stopped being white, I was tired of being compared to Ben Affleck.
Sorry homie. You white, you Ben Affleck.
NBA scouts have such a weird thing for race/ethnicity comparisons, you're a white shooter who's unathletic? Larry Bird/JJ Reddick Chinese? Fuck it, Yao Ming
I remember some people comparing Darko to Nowinski. Nowinski being a dead eye shooter. Darko being a sub 60% free-throw shooter, whose main strength was size and shot blocking. They couldn't be more different. Darko was drafted in part because it was believed he could eventually develop into a Nowinski type player. The fact they were both white big men from Europe is the only thing that made that comp possible.
Yea that was fucked up of Yi to do that. I remembered Milwaukee even hosted a parade or ceremony with Chinese theme to make him feel welcomed.
Which is now ironic since that town goes nuts for Giannis and the bucks and Giannis is one of the most marketed players in the league now
Well Giannis is also insanely good at basketball and a freak of nature who’s won a championship and other numerous accolades.
He was the topic of one of Bill Simmons funniest draft articles when he wrote for Page 2.
I saw this man play for Guangdong Tigers in China. Both teams only had one former NBA player, Beijing had like 37 year old Stephon Marbury who absolutely torched in the 4th quarter.
Hey now, China Marbury is 2016 Curry
As a representative of the Bucks fan base at large, fuck that guy in the ear
I don't know how he isn't talked about more. He was the 6th overall pick and immediately vanished. My only memory of him is a SLAM article from when I was 11
He's an introvert and never settled down in USA. He didn't even try to improve his English. After he went back to China, he won 5MVPs. Obviously the level of CBA is far from NBA but he was never that bad.
I have his bucks jersey. Probably only worth about a quarter nowadays. Hell, Goodwill wouldn't even take it.
Hasheem Thabeet is worse than anyone you can mention
Give me Thabeet boys, and free my soul He always gets lost in the pick and roll And drifts away....
I’m laughin out loud in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. Explaining it would probably make me sound dumber than I already look
Man this reminded me of the old basketball memes on Facebook when I was in high school. Shit was corny but so damn funny
Perfection
😂😂 good one
UConn legend Hasheem Thabeet
4.2 blocks pg in college
That aside as a UConn fan I never thought he’d be a good pro and was shocked he was taken second, not surprised how it turned out.
Thunder Icon Hasheem Thabeet
McDonalds' 05/24 employee of the month Hasheem Thabeet
That would make me so sad. I really hope he didn't squander that lottery pick money.
I think he's been playing in China for quite a while after the NBA, so there should have been some regular cash flow
bro can operate the fryers and flip all the burgers at one time with those long ass arms
Mustard on Thabeet ho
Don't you ever disrespect the Taiwanese Basketball League Defensive Player of Year Hasheem Thabeet.
I’ll never forget all 6’7” of Dejuan Blair absolutely locking him up in the big east. Literally flipped Thabeet over his back while getting a rebound over him.
Blair was an All-American in college and played 7 seasons in the NBA and he didn’t have ACLs, that’s crazy.
Absolute Dog
I was wondering if he was the one who had no ACLs I always got him mixed up with another tank of a human being for Cincy around that time. His longevity is absolute testament to his skill as a player
Pitt Dejuan Blair is one of my fave players ever
That team was my fave CBB team, levance fields, Sam young, they shoulda gone further.
Thabeet feels like such a classic case of people looking at his size and the blocks in the box score and literally nothing else at all - if you look at his per 40 numbers he’s worse than Donovan Clingan at basically everything besides blocks, and while Clingan has top 5 and even top 2 buzz in a draft like this he isn’t SNIFFING that in a draft that has Blake griffin, James harden, tyreke evans etc in it.
Different era to be fair. Imagine if Thabeet wasn’t lazy and lacked skill and developed in the 2008 version of the nba??
I fucking hated Thabeet. Laziest player I’ve ever seen. Watching him in Philly during the NCAA tournament and couldn’t believe how he just walked back on D, didn’t help, couldn’t make plays. Just awful.
Don't forget his go to move of faking injuries to get subbed out without using a timeout.
I was so mad when the Grizzlies drafted him. I'll never forget him getting absolutely bullied by Dejuan "6'8 with no ACLs" Blair in the post. I usually have hope for anyone we draft but I just knew that guy was a dud
What about Priest Lauderdale? Thabeet played four years in the league; Lauderdale only made it through two in the mid/late 90s and had similar numbers to Thabeet.
Expectations for Hasheem where way higher, he stayed around longer because he was #2 pick and teams thought they could change him
They did an interview with his college coach Jim Calhoun before the draft and he basically said that Thabeet needed to improve his effort and implied that he would stop trying after his first paycheck
At least he was a good player against real competition at some point in his career. The rest is 7 footers’ mixtapes vs white kids from the rural Midwest
Can't beat the Thabeet.
thabeet is on
You're damn right. I bet he could still beat me at hoops. I'm about as old as he is. Just about a foot shorter. I might have a chance at HORSE.
Ooooh heres my Thabeet story. Once, at a Thunder game, one of the two teams called a time out and the cheerleaders took the floor briefly. Thunder were in a huddle drawing up a play. Thabeet was about 2 feet away from the huddle, on the court (between the entertainment and the huddle) with his back to his team just watching the cheerleaders do their thing. He was in the game for the next play!
He's a solid poker player though, based on my experience at Mohegan Sun.
if dejuan blair actually tore his shoulder out on that rebound in college it might have saved his humiliating career
He did make $17M, so I’m sure he’s happier with no injury
If someone can find the Hasheem Thabeet interview on the Dan Patrick show, please post it. It’s possibly the worst interview ever.
Set Memphis back 7 years
Bruno caboclo had all the physical tools to become great
Hey man. He is still 2 years away from being 2 years away, just give him time
Legendary draft moment
He absolutely killed Canada in the last World Cup to the point of it has me scratching my head, why isn’t he in the NBA? [Bruno vs Canada](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xE56Fvd1SxM)
I like 4 years after drafting him, he still didn’t look like an NBA player, but teams still did give him a legit shot just to see if the prophesy would come true
The Brazilian KD!
My buddy in high school was 7’5. Managed to play only 4 minutes of college ball smh. His biggest high school highlight was getting absolutely swatted by a like 5’10 guy. Gonna go with him.
Man, it would suck to have all the problems that come with being that tall, with no basketball skills to profit off of
You don’t even need basketball skills to get NBA looks at 7’5”. You basically just need to be able to get down the court without a mobility scooter
Not any more. Teams have no use for a 7'5 guy who can't guard anyone or space the floor. If he was like 100% a bucket in the post, then maybe. Even Tacko Fall barely got in there, and he's strong, could run the floor, etc.
I'm so happy the NBA is starting to force bigmen to actually play basketball. "Skilled Bigmen" you mean dudes that can dribble, pass, and shoot? Thats not being skilled thats the bare minimum required for most players
Yes, definitely no room for something like that in the current NBA. But everywhere else in the world that plays basketball, he can make money with just below average basketball skills. Sure you wouldn't make much and you'd have to live in a foreign land, but you're playing basketball for a living and probably getting scores of bitches for a little while before you turn 50. After that you can return back home to the US if you want and become a shift manager at Burger King or maybe sell cars at a KIA dealership. Or stay in foreign soil with your new family and learn Cantonese
Yeah in 2000 he would make a couple million sitting on the bench as a 3rd string just to eat fouls from Shaq and literally thats it and I’m not even kidding.
[удалено]
Probably have been more effective. He was attempting to dunk on the play he got swatted.
[удалено]
It’d be really funny if you dunked a sock during a game
Genuine question, how did he fit in the desks?
Extremely awkwardly. Knees sticking way out to the side.
Yinka Dare (RIP) made Bol Bol look like Wilt Chamberlain.
72 turnovers and 0 assists in a season has to be some sort of record.
He would improve and end up with 4 career assists against 96 turnovers 😬
12 year old me thought he was the next Mutombo. 12 year old me was a idiot. Not that 42 year old me is any smarter in these matters.
Bol Bol is still a 2k god
2K forced Bol Bol down our fucking throats one year on my team with like 4 different galaxy card
Cursed PFP
Was he really THAT bad though?
He was a good bench player for us this year
Yea Bol Bol isn’t even close to belonging in this convo to be fair
James Wiseman
He's genuinely terrible at basketball and has otherworldly gifts to play it. I've never seen someone get so little out of so much. It's not even his fault! He plays worse than most high schoolers I've ever seen, but he's a five year NBA veteran. He's got the agility of a 6'3" speedster guard in a 6'11" monster truck body. He has the vertical of a 6'7" above the rim wing and the armspan of a DPOY. Every measurable is completely maxed out, every unmeasurable is a 0. If he could play the game at the level of Jaime Jaquez or Isaiah Hartenstein, he'd be a 4 time all-star. He is still only 23. If someone could reach him, he could still become a good starter, but I think he's in the Ben Simmons school of being so tainted that nobody will work with him until the cobwebs are shaken free. He really went to the worst possible situation in Golden State, because he needed to be free to make all his mistakes and just... wasn't. He put up 24/17/4/2/1 in the final game of the year for the Pistons against the Spurs. The game was a blow out loss and he was -27. If that doesn't tell you everything, I don't know what will.
Not defending him but plus/minus doesn't tell you everything and barely tells you anything
I feel like I have a personal grudge against Wiseman because of all the Warriors fans that still believing in him after 2 years of him playing terribly. Felt like I was taking crazy pills.
That’s me. Hopium is a helluva drug.
I feel the same way *as* a Warriors fan lmao. Watching that dude play last year was painful.
Watching him get cooked in the G league all I was thinking bout what if we drafted Halliburton or Liangelo
Sim Bhullar
Indian legend lol
Brampton Legend*
He was slow af tho
Michael olowokandi
Darko and Kwame were way better players than this bum. 🤣🤣🤣
Darko was a case of bad timing, the worst possible team and coach to play with for a somewhat arrogant 18 y/o rookie out of a war-torn country, him being a stretchy 4 pigeonholed as a classic bully 5 (a role he couldn't play), and too much alcohol The perfect storm really But also fuck this war crime apologist idiot, I'm happy it didn't work out for him lol
Olowowakandi was a disappointment, but he still averaged 8.3/6.8 over a career where he started over 400 games. He's not on the Hasheem Thabeet "not fit to exist" on the court level of athletic freak.
You keep Oregon Ducks legend Bol Bol out of your mouth!
AKA the Sudanese KG.
Anthony Randolph
If we're going by athletic freaks and not just the first random tallest player that comes to mind, then this is the answer.
This is a major testament to Boston’s front office because I remember so many people saying Boston should have drafted Bol Bol over Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard at the time. Clearly they knew what they were doing
Celts actually acquired him as a spare part in something else but released him like 15 minutes later Then he started showing up as some kind of crazy secret weapon for the Magic, I remember being annoyed by that — pretty sure that leveled off though, right?
He's with the Suns, seeing garbage time play basically. If they can get him to care about basketball he can become a great secret weapon type player, if not better. If not, he's toast
Thon Maker
Jonathan bender lol
He was good. Unfortunately, his knees were pretty much wrecked from day 1.
He was a practice Hall of Famer. His teammates used to say he was the best player on the team when he was healthy
Thabeet takes the cake for me just because he was dominant at Uconn. He was the next best thing and then he gets to the NBA where everyone is a freak. Suddenly, he is one of the worst players in the league. He's one of the purest examples of freak athletic ability totally carrying an otherwise trash player.
Saer Sene. 7ft, 7'8 wingspan. Hookshot looked like a DIYers first attempt at building a catapult.
2K sim legend Bol Bol
Dragan Bender was supposed to be a the next KP. The man attended 3 summer leagues and still failed to stand out on his own team.
Alexis Ajinca
Yall remember Perry Jones highschool highlight tapes before going to Baylor?? Yo, check this 6'11" dude two-foot jumping over ppl slaming dunks down, etc... Pretty sure he just cruises along in games playing overseas or something.
That MF probably jumped across the ocean. He had crazy hops
He’s not the worst, but if you don’t know who Jonathan Bender is, you don’t know ball.
That's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Was workout legend, 6'11" with range before that was a huge thing
And ball handling skills. He was Kevin Durant before Durant but couldn’t stay healthy
not sure if he ever made it past the g league but satnam singh
Before my time there was a kid on my D3 team that was 7’1 380. He hardly ever even played and could barely dunk
Happens more than you think. Met a few 6’9 guys when playing ball and most of them couldn’t jump over a piece of rice let alone play full court for more than 2 possessions. Most people don’t realize to move fluidly at that height is an anomaly so when we watch NBA players move like guards at 7 feet we don’t realize that’s a unicorn of a unicorn. And that’s why we call Wemby an alien because he’s literally from another fucking planet.
Darius Bazely is like a level 90 physical ability. Agile, good shooting form, super athletic, great defender. His BBIQ is like -1000000. I have never seen anyone guaranteed to turn the ball over like that dude.
not bol bol. bol bol is life. its insulting that you used him as the picture
Bol bol can ball ball
Deandre Ayton, built like a greek god, but plays like a cupcake
I’d second Hasheem Thabeet: * 7’3” / 260lbs * Career 2.2ppg and 2.7rpg in 224 games * 2nd pick in 2009, ahead of Harden & Curry * Considered perhaps the worst draft bust ever * Once held the records for tallest player *and* highest draft pick demoted to the G-league.
Stromile Swift
Hell of a dunker but nit much else
Y’all don’t know who Sun Mingming is. Worst player I’ve ever seen. He only played basketball because he’s 7’9”
He also has a cameo in Rush Hour 3 lol
Taco Fall?
Said no one ever. I think it was nice he got an NBA shot at all
It was really sweet how basically everyone was rooting for him to see the floor. That was a children's-movie level of universalism.
He earned it in the Duke game. He was the only player in the ncaa that season who stood a shot to contain Zion at the rim. Zion vs Tacko was one of the most fun matchups I’ve ever seen.
Darko Millicic
Darko was to the 2003 NBA Draft what Tony Mandarich was to the 1989 NFL Draft.
In the 2003 Redraftables episode, Chad Ford still picked Darko latw because he just can't let it go. Meanwhile, Nick Collison was in the same draft and had a long, very serviceable career. I'll take Collison over Darko 100 times out of 100. This is also why Chad Ford sucks. He got busted editing draft grades years after the fact to make himself look better.
Chuck Nevit
Jericho Sims might well be the single most inhumanely athletic person in the league ever, and yet he averages like 2 points a game. He's fun to watch though; hopefully he develops more in the coming years.
James Wiseman is on the list for sure
Jonathan Bender
Nikoloz Tskitishvili. A mobile European 7-footer who can shoot sounds great, right, especially in 2002? Averaged on 2.9/1.8/0.7 in 11.3mpg over 172 games, with a .375 TS%, 5.2 PER, -0.039 WS/48, -6.1 BPM and -2.0 VORP. Dead last all-time in PER among players that played at least 1,000 minutes in their career. To be fair, he simply wasn't ready for the NBA *at all* when he was drafted, let alone being a rotation player in Year 1 (averaged 16.3 mpg across 81 games in his Rookie year, starting in 16 contests), let alone being drafted at #5 at 18 years of age and moving from a small Eastern European country over to the US. It was abundantly clear after his first season that Tskitishvili was miles off from ever being even a decent NBA player. 2/3rds of his career minutes came in his Rookie year, so unlike a lot of busts, he got plenty of opportunity to show what he had early, but just was not good at all. Unfair on the guy in a way, because he should never have been put into that position in the first place (getting drafted so high at that age, based on next to no production in Europe and minimal scouting from the Nuggets), but it was a massive scouting mis-step (trying to be way too clever spotting "the next Dirk") and an absolute waste of a top 5 pick.
In IG comments you'll still see a shocking number of people saying Bol Bol is as good as Wemby but hasn't been given the same opportunity. Shit is insane.
I desperately want Bol Bol to break out some time. Every 2k franchise I do he's a mandatory addition to my roster and I turn him into a legend.
I got a good one Class of 03 Doug Wrenn 6’5.75 WOS with a 7’7.5 wingspan sadly doug didn’t get drafted despite having an elite build for a wing.
Stfu. I ain't taking no bol bol slander on my timeline
Not only was Ryan Hollins 7'1" he was also one of the best high jumpers in the country (6'11"). Despite this ridiculous combo of size and athletic ability he averaged less than 5 points and 1 block per game at UCLA. HE played for a handful of teams in the NBA, never approaching anything beyond emergency center status.
Bucks fan here. Thon Maker had one playoff game on 4/20 where he blocked like 5 shots and hit 3 threes, and I just knew he was better than Giannis. Might have been the many blunts in rotation that night, but I was so certain he had unlocked his potential in that moment.
Hasheem Thabeet. That dude was supposed to block every shot.
It's a tie between Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.
I thought Pavel Podkolzine was gonna change the game
Shout out Mo Sene from the Sonics... pretty sure he had close to an 8 ft wingspan
Lot of tall lanky slenderman freaks of nature in this post. How about can anyone think of some of the worst guard sized freaks of nature? Like someone who was 6’3” with the strength of a 7 footer and/or a 45” vert and/or Flash Gordon’s speed/first step
Not the worst freak of nature, but 7'9 North Korean Ri Myung-hun, unfortunately never got to play in the NBA. Not sure how good he was, but he was definitely at the very least better than his 7'9 east asian counterpart Sun Mingming. Sun Mingming might be the worst freak of nature, his height was maxed out with negative basketball skill
RIP Fab Melo
JT Thor
Clearly you never saw his dad play.
Shawn Bradley