7 best undrafted talents to play for Cleveland Cavaliers

Best undrafted Cavs player No. 1: Ben Wallace

To this point, none of the players on this list have been stars. While there are a few notable players in NBA history who went from undrafted status to stardom, the list isn’t long, and most of them never played for the Cleveland Cavaliers. The exception is Ben Wallace, right at the top of the list for the best players in NBA history to go undrafted.

The 6’9″ big man played college basketball well out of the spotlight, finishing his college career at Virginia Union before going undrafted in 1996. He caught on with the Washington Bullets and averaged just 5.8 minutes per game, but slowly started to build his career from there. By his second year he was getting spot starts, and by his fourth season he started 81 games for the Orlando Magic.

The following season was when his career truly took off. He was traded in the offseason to the Detroit Pistons as part of the Grant Hill deal, and he would become the league’s best defensive player over the next seven years. He was a four-time All-Star, a six-time All-Defense winner, and won four Defensive Player of the Year awards. He was a dominant interior presence on a Detroit Pistons team that contended for a title for years, winning one in 2004.

Wallace made his way to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2008, and played a season-and-a-half. He had very little to offer on offense but continued to be a defensive stalwart. His athleticism began to wane and the Cavs moved on in 2009, when he returned to Detroit to finish out his career.

Players like Wallace and Mozgov had relatively short stints in Cleveland, while players like Dean Wade and Lamar Stevens are building their careers entirely with the Cavs thus far. All of these plays overcame the odds and proved NBA front offices wrong by building careers after going undrafted.