1. 1984 - olajuwan, jordan, stockton, barkley. 4 of the greatest players in their positions ever (if not the greatest). enough said -- i think this as number one is undebatable. legit players alvin robertson and kevin willis were drafted as well. there have been deeper drafts, but none have produced 4 players of such proportions since. best players of this draft is a tie between the dream and mj.
2. 1996 - iverson, marbury, shareef, kobe, antoine walker, ray allen, stojakovic, jermaine o'neal, ilguascaz, steve nash just to name a few. this draft was incredibly deep and the higher tier players produced are/were very very very good. best players of this draft is a tie between starbury, iverson, kobe, maybe o'neal and maybe stojakovic.
3. 1987 - david robinson, pippen, reggie miller, horace grant, mark jackson. produced 2 bull central championship pieces and a couple of other great players. best player = tie between admiral and pip
4. 1999 - francis, brand, odom, baron davis, rip hamilton, marion, artest, kirilenko, scerzbiak, andre miller, terry. also a very good draft, i dont know how it'll withstand the test of time though....... best player = brand
5. 1985 - ewing, malone, dumars, mullin, terry porter. even if ewing and malone never won championships they're still pretty good
dumars and mullin and porter were great players as well. best player = dumars, ewing and malone very very close though.
there were 2 drafts that i wouldve listed if not for drastic injuries to their star players -- the 92 draft with zo and shaq.....2 great centres. spree and laetner and googs were also drated that year. googs was also injured.
the other draft i almost included but couldnt and that was the 94 one with glenn robinson, hill, kidd, eddie jones and jalen rose. if hill hadnt gotten injured this'd be serious consideration for #2.
interesting things i noticed is that present day drafts seem to be much deeper. some people think that old nba eras were more talented, i used to maybe agree, but now, in my opinion, i think that the talent differential was a lot larger, in otherwords, there were a lot more bad players making the good players seem better. i think nowadays the nba is talent rich and fans are just plain greedy
and we end this post with the most dissapoint draft ever (there have been more dissapointing ones, but i picked this one just because i want to
)
1995 - joe smith, mcdeyess, big country, stackhouse, rasheed wallace, damon stoudamire. this actually was a good draft with the likes ratliff, finley and best roudning out the first round and of course kg, but the higher picked players really dissapointed me -- they had more talent then what theyve become -- most are still good players though. i didnt say it was a bad draft, it just personally disapointed me that some of the players didnt reach their potentials. i guess kg makes up for it though.
i think 1984 was best ever probably cuz of three things:
