Cleveland Cavaliers: What is their NBA Draft history with pick No. 3?

The 2021 NBA Draft is quickly approaching, and on Thursday, July 29th all 30 teams will have decisions to make. For some they will be relatively minor decisions, but other teams in prime draft slots will be making decisions that impact the franchise for years to come. The Cleveland Cavaliers head into the draft with the third overall pick.

This will be the highest draft slot for the Cavaliers since they selected Andrew Wiggins first overall in 2014 just days before LeBron James announced that he was “coming home” to Cleveland. Since The King’s departure they have taken players with the eighth, fifth and fifth picks. This year they have a shot at an even better prospect.

There are plenty of pieces available around the sight about which player the Cavaliers should take at pick No. 3. Should they add to their backcourt with Jalen Green or Jalen Suggs? Should they take the prototypical modern big in Evan Mobley? Could Scottie Barnes or Jonathan Kuminga make a late push up the draft board?

Zooming out, let’s take a look at the Cavaliers’ draft history. When, if ever, have they held the No. 3 pick in the draft before? How did that selection turn out? Let’s take a walk through memory lane and find out.

Have the Cleveland Cavaliers held the No. 3 pick in the NBA Draft before? Yes, but just once…

Dwight Davis was a strong, dominant force in college playing for the Houston Cougars. In the 1971-72 season Davis averaged 24.4 points, 11.7 rebounds and 3.9 assists as a senior, leading the Cougars to the NCAA Tournament and earning second-team All-American honors.

That same season, the Cleveland Cavaliers were spinning their tires despite being led by future Hall of Fame coach Bill Fitch. Rookie Austin Carr was the team’s leading scorer, and guys by the name of “Butch Beard” and “Bingo Smith” featured prominently. In just their second season of existence, the Cavaliers finished 23-59 and earned the No. 3 pick.

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LaRue Martin went first overall en route to a forgettable career, but North Carolina’s Bob McAdoo went second, who would go on to make five All-Star teams and win the 1974-75 league MVP award. Then Cleveland was up, and they took Dwight Davis at pick No. 3.

Davis did not set the world on fire as a young player. averaging 9.4 points and 7.0 rebounds per game as a rookie. That was enough to make the All-Rookie team, and he built on that as a second-year player with 12.5 points and 8.5 rebounds in a more substantial role. Things went backwards the next season, however, and he earned less playing time with similar per-minute production.

At that point the Cavaliers made the decision to move on. Davis was sent to the contending Golden State Warriors, and the Cavaliers got back a couple of draft picks. Davis was a bench big for the Warriors in 1975-76 and ’76-77, but midway through that second season suffered a career-ending quadriceps injury.

Suffice it to say that the Cavaliers did not get a great return on their only third overall pick. Players such as Paul Westphal and Julius Erving went after Davis in that same draft, and clearly could have helped the Cavaliers find their footing as a franchise sooner.

What other connections to the third overall pick do the Cavaliers have?

Interestingly enough, the Cavaliers have never had a key player on their team who was taken third overall. Baron Davis, a former third pick, was salary-dumped on the Cavaliers in a trade that netted them an unprotected first-round pick that would become Kyrie Irving. Davis played just 15 games with the Cavaliers that year.

Another point guard, Deron Williams, joined the team for the stretch run in 2016-17, playing 24 regular season games and then all 18 postseason games for the Cavs. Darius Miles joined the team in the prime of his career, but that didn’t mean much; he averaged just 9.1 points per game in the wine and gold.

A handful of former No. 3 picks joined the Cavaliers at the very end of their careers to play minor roles. Elmore Smith, Benoit Benjamin, Mike Dunleavy Jr. and Richard Washington, who all had careers of varying quality, spent their final or penultimate seasons in a Cavaliers jersey.

Somewhat surprisingly for the Cavaliers, there have only been a handful of times when they picked higher than third but clearly picked the worse player. The key example, taking the wrong Kansas prospect in 2014 with Andrew Wiggins instead of Joel Embiid, didn’t hurt the team; they traded Wiggins before his value took a hit from its first overall peak.

One year prior, however, the Cavaliers swung-and-missed on Anthony Bennett out of UNLV at first overall. If they had taken the third pick, Otto Porter Jr., they would have had a trade chip with value instead of as a throw-in for the Kevin Love trade, as Bennett was.

The Cavaliers’ worst experience with the third overall pick likely comes from the greatest third pick ever, Michael Jeffrey Jordan. His Airness has single-handedly administered some of the worst moments in franchise history, chief among them being “The Shot” over Craig Ehlo in 1989, which painfully ended Cleveland’s best chance at a title for decades.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have not had a positive experience with the third overall pick, but they also haven’t had many swings at the plate. This year is the time to turn things around and hit a home run at pick No. 3, turning around the current team and the franchise’s history at three.