Canzano Calls The Worst Draft Pick In Blazers History......

Mychal Thompson over Larry Bird
Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan
Greg Oden over Kevin Durant

 

Thank you. What strikes me is not so much the opinions, but the positivity and politeness among everyone of us from that era. We really were better back then, even though oursituation was worse. We have degraded as a group over the last 6 years.

 

LaRue Martin easily. It's not even close. If you choose someone else your either too young or you don't follow the history of the team very closely.

 

It's time to set the world straight on Larue Martin, and fortunately, the world has me.

The prevailing theory was that the 1st pick should be a center, and Martin was the tallest in the 1972 NBA draft, taller than Gianelli and Hawes (projected as a forward). (Gianelli and Hawes are now seen as the best centers in that draft, which isn't saying much.) NBA pickings were slim due to the ABA. Yes, the NBA drafted Erving, but he had just finished his rookie year in the ABA (4th in points, 3rd in rebounds leaguewide). So McAdoo (projected as a forward) became NBA rookie of the year. Jim Chones was the best rookie center that year. He was ABA because a few months earlier, the ABA had signed him in the middle of his senior year, when he was college's 2nd best center after the sophomore Walton. Walton said he was surprised that a player would desert his college team.

Larue Martin's career was shortened to 4 years due to injury. (208 pounds was tiny for a center even then.) At the end, he got the 2 best coaches of centers in existence besides Wooden. First, Bill Russell brought him to the Sonics. Russell said that Martin would have been a better player if he hadn't been drafted so high and had been developed more slowly. Martin had gotten big minutes from the start and developed bad habits that Russell couldn't correct because Blazer coaching (McCloskey and Wilkens) didn't teach him much. After Russell waived him, Bill Fitch, a great unnoticed teacher of centers (Chones, Parish, Olajuwon), tried him and waived him too.

Ahh, I got in my weekly plug for Bill Fitch.

 

Just to expand on your post.

That entire draft was thrown into chaos by the threat of lawsuits by the ABA, who held their draft first. They claimed one of their teams had an oral agreement with MacAdoo, and threatened to sue the NBA team that drafted him (same with several other players). On top of that, the NBA stated that some players, including Erving, were ineligible to be drafted at all.

One version of the story, is that the NBA front office warned teams not to draft MacAdoo, and the Blazers just blindly went along. Another version, is that MacAdoo told the Blazers he would testify that there was no contract, but his salary demands were too high. In either event, Buffalo obviously took the risk, and got the ROY.

One other note. MacAdoo (the #2 pick) was ROY. The runner up for ROY was Lloyd Neal, who was drafted (IIRC) in the 4th round! That is just how screwed up that draft was. The Blazers weren't the only team that was left scrambling to change their plans at the last minute because of the legal threats.

 

The league was a different landscape then, with crooked shenanigans. In 1971 I lived in Southern California, where Sidney Wicks had just won 2 NCAA championships with John Wooden. When Austin Carr went 1st in the draft, the local sportscasters were beside themselves in fury. Why did Cleveland pick Carr? In Nov. 2008 I finally found out, 37 years later. It was a legal bribe. Eggers says,

"Glickman reveals that the Blazers paid Cleveland $250,000 to take Austin Carr with the first pick in the 1971 draft, leaving Sidney Wicks to Portland -- a story I had not heard."

http://www.portlandtribune.com/sports/story.php?story_id=122640968731099300

 

I'm not accusing the Blazers of taking a bribe to take Larue Martin (from the Buffalo Braves, or Loyola of Chicago, or someplace that would gain from Martin's being the #1 pick).

I'm just saying that the Blazer GM admitted participating in an identical bribe in an identical draft situation in the very previous draft exactly 1 year before, almost to the day.

Let us construe this as a "pairing of dissimilar events."

Save this history. I can now die in peace.

 

I thought the main debate at the time was Gerald Green vs. Martell Webster.

 

It was. Telfair had been pretty good his rookie year, so talk of Chris Pauland Deron Williams was limited to "this is kind of wild speculation, but..." talk. I searched that forum for several pages in either direction of the draft and didn't see a single "we shoulda taken Paul" post...

...except one from Colin Cowherd's radio sow, mimicking a Canzano opinion. It was basically derided by the forumers as idiotic. I didn't see Ed coming to Colin's defense, either.

 

Martin, Oden, Bowie, and possibly Thompson like Fez said. (In no specific order)

 

We were so much older then, we're younger than that now...

What did that nice insightful meru have to say? I remember him being the voice of reason...

 

I sort of agree with Canzano. If the Blazers had drafted Jordan then I wouldn't be a Blazers' fan. Big loss, I hear you say - but it's important to me.

And Bowie was actually a lot like Walton: a very skilled, clever finesse center, who could have been a lot better if he hadn't've been injured. AND he helped to get us Buck Williams, one of my all-time faves.

Meanwhile, while I can't dislike Martell, I would kill to have Deron Williams. (I'd maim to have Paul, but I prefer Williams.)

 

Not taking Jordan wasn't the worst thing to happen, losing the coin flip was!

+Hakeem
-Bowie/Williams

and we win multiple championships.

 

You got it. Folks look at reality here. When Sam Bowie was drafted he was considered the coin flip equivelent of Hakeem Olajuwan in many ways. Whoevever won was going to take Olajuwan. It was generally accepted at the time that whoever lost would take Bowie. That is how I remember it anyhow. You cannot say the same thing about Webster.

 

In defense of Ed O, he sounded pretty tepid about Webster in this link from your initial list...
http://www.basketballforum.com/portland-trail-blazers/178884-we-drafted-good-guy-webster.html

As Ed noted, I was all about Chris Paul, but I could see the writing on the wall that Nash wasn't going to go that way because of who he'd drafted the year prior. Because of that, I'd largely given up championing CP's merits further in the weeks surrounding the draft and tried hard to be positive about the direction they were going. I'm sure I said something along the lines of I hope Martell lives up to his draft position too, as coming straight out of HS he was pretty much an unknown to all of us. If he really was worth passing on knowns like DWilliams and Paul, then that would have been great.

It did amaze me the way that some people were so sure that this was the right move though. Telfair had shown he was fast but thats about it. Martell was a complete question mark to all... for as team absolutely lacking in talent it seemed that MW being articulate and local resonated an undo amount. Oh well... looking back at past drafts lends some perspective to our present back and forths.

STOMP

 

Everybody was willing to give Webster his run, nobody knew much about him besides that he had a good workout. When the teams management gives you no choice, there isn't a whole lot you can do but hope for the best. At that time, the team was so bad, we were pretty much looking for anything positive to go with, and unfortunately, all we got was a kick in the fucking teeth.

 

beyond how stupid it is to apparently primarily base their evaluations on a single day's work, is the context of that workout. Matched up on fellow prospects 5'8 Nate Robinson and 6'3 Rashad McCants, GM Nash had this genius quote to relay..."What we learned today is that Martell Webster is capable of defending (shooting guards) at a very high level," Nash said. "(His) defense was very good and his ability to dribble the ball against pressure he can dribble the ball low to the floor was very impressive."

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/428/martell-webster-s-workout-video

the only positive about that draft is that it sealed Nash's fate

STOMP

 

I see what you're saying; you and I just have a different set of criteria for what constitutes "worst." I make little account for the reasons one player was taken over another (need, BPA, etc.) I'm only looking at the gap in productivity between one pick and another. The gap between Jordan and Bowie is like the grand canyon and Bowie at least had a so-so yeoman's career that lasted around 10 years or so. The productivity/acclaim gap between Oden and Durant isn't huge (yet) but if Oden's career gets cut short and he never gets on track and Durant goes onto a HOF career then that's the primary factor by which I would compare the two. The decision making process that lead to one pick or another is largely irrelevant to me (even if the reasoning behind picking Oden was sound).

Conversely, if Oden gets his body right and puts the injury shortened seasons behind him and goes on to have an all-star level career (like his raw physical tools suggests he could) that gulf between he and KD never gets that wide and he'll be a nice consolation prize for missing on Durant.