Cavs’ Draft: 5 best players to go 14th in NBA Draft history

Cavs’ Draft: 5 best players to go 14th: No. 1 – Clyde Drexler, 1983

The 1984 NBA Draft is considered one of the deepest drafts in the history of the league, but the 1983 draft was much more of a crapshoot. Only five players from that class would go on to even make an All-Star team, and only one of those 5 went in the top 8. It was a draft of role players and ho-hum starters outside of a few incandescent torches.

The brightest torch of all was Clyde “the Glide” Drexler, a smooth-scoring shooting guard out of Houston who was a part of the “Phi Slamma Jamma” team alongside Hakeem Olajuwon, who would go first overall in the 1984 draft. Drexler slid to 14th and was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers.

Drexler would go on to have a highly decorated career, making 10 All-Star appearances and being named to 5 All-NBA teams, an impressive feat given that he was always playing in the shadow of Michael Jordan. He averaged 20.4 points per game alongside 6.1 rebounds and 5.6 assists; add in two steals per game and you begin to see how Drexler impacted the game in a number of ways.

Drexler led the Trail Blazers to the playoffs all 11 years he was in Portland, including two trips to the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992. Finally he broke through with the Houston Rockets in 1995, reuniting with Olajuwon to win his first and Hakeem’s second title. Last fall I ranked him as the 42nd-best player in NBA history.