The NBA Draft is something of a gamble every year for every team. For every can’t-miss prospect who fits the bill, there are others who absolutely fall on their face. The Cleveland Cavaliers made four No. 1 overall picks this century; one is the greatest player in the history of the NBA, one is a multi-time All-Star, one finally settled in as an elite role player and the last one is….well, Anthony Bennett is playing in Taiwan this season.
The goal in the NBA Draft is to pick the best available player given the information at hand. Sometimes that seems easy, and other times it’s much more difficult. Who do you take fourth in a three-person draft? What if the best player available plays the same position as last year’s pick? At what point in the draft does it make sense to take a player with a high floor over the possibility of a high ceiling?
Acing a draft pick can change your franchise
Teams have been making blunders in the NBA Draft since it was first implemented, but sometimes they absolutely nail their pick and take the absolute best player available. That has certainly happened to the Cleveland Cavaliers at least a few times in the history of their team, and those players have helped to spark some of the highest heights in franchise history.
Let’s look at five times the Cavaliers aced the draft and took a franchise-defining player. We are focusing on players that either vastly exceeded their draft slot or, in the case of picks at the top of the draft, met expectations for an elite pick. We’re going to focus on players that also made an impact for the Cavs specifically; if the Cavs took a player but moved on from him before they fully realized their abilities they don’t get as much credit.
To that end, honorable mentions go out to Carlos Boozer, Danny Green and Bill Laimbeer who all well outplayed their second-round draft selection (Laimbeer actually went in the third round in 1979), as well as Andre Miller (8th pick) and Kevin Johnson (7th) who played to their draft selection but mostly excelled on other teams.
Without further ado, the five times the Cleveland Cavaliers aced the NBA Draft.
No. 5: Kyrie Irving, No. 1 pick in 2011 Draft
Kyrie Irving was the consensus top pick for the 2011 NBA Draft, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t concerns about a team taking him first overall. He had missed more than half of the season for the Duke Blue Devils, and players like Derrick Williams and Enes Kanter (now Enes Freedom) had size and production on their sides.
Irving proved the Cavaliers right as soon as his feet hit the court, and he was the obvious Rookie of the Year winner. He put on such a display in the 2011 Rising Stars Game that he was the talk of All-Star Weekend despite not playing in the big game. By his second season he was an All-Star, and in 12 seasons he has been an All-Star eight times.
Irving has one of the best handles in the game, dribbling with that ball-on-a-rope style that leaps off the screen, and he is likely the best guard finisher. His touch around the rim is elite and he can finish in traffic and from all angles. When you add in that he is a 39.1 percent 3-point shooter and a mid-range maestro, it’s not an exaggeration to label him as one of the best shot-makers of the last decade.
There are serious questions about his priorities and wisdom, but those mostly cropped up since he left the Cavaliers. While in Cleveland he hit the greatest shot in NBA history, the go-ahead 3-pointer in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals. Of players drafted first overall since LeBron James (19 drafts) Irving ranks fourth in win shares (he’ll pass Blake Griffin for third this season), third in VORP and third in points per game. He was an excellent selection with the first pick.
No. 4: Zydrunas Ilgauskas, No. 20 pick in 1996 Draft
Going back another 15 years we come to Zydrunas Ilgauskas, a player who went a fair bit later in the draft than Kyrie Irving. The Lithuanian center was taken 20th overall in the 1996 NBA Draft and proceeded to play 13 seasons in the league, all but the last one with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
In the lost years prior to drafting LeBron James, Ilgauskas was the anchor on a number of teams that struggled to field talent around him. He was a reliable post scorer and elite rim protector, and once LeBron joined him they formed the backbone of league-leading defenses during the rest of Ilgauskas’s prime.
“Big Z” had an above-average career for being the 20th pick, but he also stands out in relation to the other options available in 1996. A number of all-time players were drafted ahead of him; Kobe Bryant, Seve Nash, Allen Iverson and Ray Allen all went in the top 15. Yet the list of players who went after Ilgauskas is grim; Derek Fisher was a valuable role player on title teams, and Erick Dampier carved out a long career, but Ilgauskas was the clear best pick for the Cavaliers at No. 20.
One of the defining faces of two different eras of Cleveland basketball, Ilgauskas was a two-time All-Star and features prominently on a number of franchise leaderboards. Big Z is second in career rebounds, first in blocks and second in career points. He wasn’t a Hall of Famer but he was a significant win with the 20th pick.
No. 3: Darius Garland, No. 5 pick in 2019 Draft
From a 7’3″ center to a 6’1″ point guard, Darius Garland was an elite pick with the No. 5 pick in the 2019 NBA Draft. He was far from a lock for the Cavs to draft with that pick, as the highly-ranked guard missed nearly all of his freshman season at Vanderbilt with a knee injury.
The 2019 draft board went as expected ahead of the Cavaliers, with Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, RJ Barrett and De’Andre Hunter filling out the first four picks. The Cavs would have had a solid argument for drafting another player with the fifth pick; players like Jarrett Culver and Cam Reddish were healthier and better positional fits a year after drafting Collin Sexton eighth overall.
To their credit, Cleveland took the best player on their board and selected Darius Garland. He has been a brilliant selection in his own right, making an All-Star Game and proving himself one of the best young guards in the league. His combination of scoring, shooting and passing makes him an ideal fit for the modern game, and he does all with excellence.
Only seven players have ever averaged 20 points, 7.5 assists and shot 40 percent from 3-point range; the list is a collection of Hall of Famers (Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Larry Bird and Kevin Johnson), fellow rising star Tyrese Haliburton, and flash-in-the-pan Dana Barros. Garland hit those marks last year while playing alongside another star in Donovan Mitchell.
The Cavs’ selection only looks better when compared to what came after in 2019. The next five picks: Jarrett Culver, Coby White, Jaxson Hayes, Rui Hachimura and Cam Reddish. None of those players have even sniffed stardom and none are in line to start entering this fifth season; only White is with his original team, and Culver is already out of the league.
No. 2: Mark Price, No. 25 pick in 1986 Draft
Our deepest reach into franchise history for this list is Mark Price, the 25th pick in the 1986 NBA Draft. The “OK Kid” was a star high school player in Oklahoma before starring at Georgia Tech, finishing as an All-American three times before entering the NBA Draft.
Price had a slow rookie season but exploded in his second season, becoming a full-time starter and never looking back. He was an All-Star by his third year and was one of the league’s best passers and shooters throughout his career, three times leading the league in free-throw shooting (missing the games played benchmark to lead the league another few times). He would make four All-NBA teams, shoot over 40 percent from 3-point range for his career, and prove himself one of the 10 best players in franchise history, with a strong case for Top-5.
The only player with more career value from the 1986 Draft was Jeff Hornacek, who was much healthier during his career and played 350 more games than Price. The only player with a better Box Plus-Minus (value without volume factored in) was Arvydas Sabonis. Dennis Rodman had the playoff success. But no matter how you slice it, Price was a top-5 player from that draft and the Cavs got him at 25; that’s how you ace a draft pick.
No. 1: LeBron James, No. 1 pick in 2003 Draft
No other player belongs at the top of this list. LeBron James is the greatest player in the history of the NBA, a combination of the highest peak and an impossibly long prime; he is probably still a top-10 player entering his age-39 season, his 21st in the league. He has made 19 All-NBA teams, a staggering number; for all that Michael Jordan went “6-0” in the NBA Finals, he made just 11 All-NBA teams in his career.
James tops Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neal as the great No. 1 pick in league history. He has been to nine NBA Finals, won four titles, and led the league in scoring one season and assists in another. He is the best player in franchise history even if you evaluate just one of his two stints in Cleveland, and no player has won Finals MVP for three different franchises.
There was never any doubt that the Cavaliers were going to take Akron’s own LeBron James in 2003, but the fact that the player taken directly after LeBron was one of the most recognizable busts in league history speaks to the peril. If the Cavs hadn’t won the Draft Lottery they could have been the team selecting Darko Milicic, and the Denver Nuggets or Vancouver Grizzlies could have been the ones with franchise-defining success.
Not every draft pick has worked out; the Cavaliers did take Anthony Bennet first overall, after all. Yet in these five instances they absolutely aced the task before them and drafted the perfect player, with each selection driving a certain era of Cavs basketball. Assuming Evan Mobley joins Darius Garland on this list, the future is incredibly bright because of their success in the draft.