Does Sam Bowie deserves to be considered the Biggest Draft Bust of all-time?

Ruddiger

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Recently, I was reading an article about Sam Bowie in wikipedia. Curious about his career and being infamous as the player the Portland Trailblazers picked ahead of Michael Jordan with the number two pick of the 1984 NBA draft, Portland still gets harshly criticized for that infamous pick.

But was the pick really as bad as it was made out to be? There was no possible way The Trailblazers could have foreseen the future and have known how these players careers turned out. Even if they picked Jordan over Bowie it is possible Portland wouldn't have won any championship titles and could have made a winning team dynamic. Jordan and Drexler on the same team could be a volatile situation as both are go-to guys when it comes to scoring. It could very well be a Allen Iverson/Jerry Stackhouse situation.

And when Portland drafter Bowie the consensus was in order to win an NBA Championship you needed a big man at the center.

Has the Sam Bowie pick been grossly overstated by sports writers? Where I live in Sacramento the Sacramento Kings used to be notorious for making just plain stupid draft picks. For instance, in the 1990 draft they drafted four, count 'em four, first round draft picks and here were their picks: Lionel Simmons, Travis Mays, Duane Causewell and Anthony Bonner. None of them had anything resembling a meaningful career in the NBA. Yet, not many sports publications bring this up.

Often times there is no possible way a team could know what they are drafting and how good they will turn out to be.

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