2000 Draft
For just about every single team, the 2000 NBA Draft was a rough one.
It’s never a good sign when the top two teams in the draft don’t even exist anymore. Here, 13 years later, the New Jersey Nets and Vancouver Grizzlies are no longer on the NBA map. Turns out, Kenyon Martin and (to a much, much greater degree) Stromile Swift were not quite enough.
Yet every single team also passed on one player who would go on to rank in the top five in points per game a few years later.
In fact, the Bulls passed on this player six times and ended up with Marcus Fizer (4), Chris Mihm (7), Dalibor Bagaric (24), A.J. Guyton (32), Jake Voskuhl (33), and Khalid El-Amin (34) to show for it. In the next three seasons, they went 21-61, 30-52, and 23-59.
Even the Bucks skipped over this player when they chose Jason Collier with the #15 pick before trading that pick for Joel Przybilla.
But with luminaries such as Hanno Mottola, Chris Carrawell, and Olumide Oyedeji freshly off the board, the Bucks nabbed one half of the dynamic Ohio State backcourt in the form of Michael Redd.
And so for one team, the 2000 NBA Draft was a red-letter day.
10 More Thoughts About The 2000 Draft
- When you add up all the points scored by the 10 players drafted directly in front of Redd, it equals 11,565. Redd scored 11,972 by lonesome.
- By the way, remember the other half of that dynamic Ohio State backcourt? Of course you do. Scoonie Penn is not a name you forgot. He was drafted at #57 by the Hawks, but never tasted the NBA, instead playing for 13 professional teams mostly throughout Europe over 11 years.
- With Redd’s retirement, three players remain active this season in the NBA from the 2000 draft: Kenyon Martin (1), Mike Miller (5), and Jamal Crawford (8).
- On that general note, the only player to score more career points than Redd is Crawford (Redd tops him easily in points per game, as the chart notes).
- The Bucks also nabbed Jason Hart with the #43 pick, and while he only played in one game for the team, he went on to play 341 league games, and was the best guy on the board. Between trading for Przybilla (who turned in a nice little career), and picking Redd and Hart, the Bucks somehow chose three players who all were still in the league a decade later in 2010.
- Desmond Mason at #16 was a smart pick by the SuperSonics, and you might recall he had a few nice years in Milwaukee early in the decade.
- Marko Jaric, the #30 pick by the Clippers, once entered a game with his jersey on backwards, which was enjoyable at the time.
- Mateen Cleaves led Michigan State to the 2000 NCAA Championship. The NBA was a struggle.
- Two players from Indian Hills Community College were drafted: Ernest Brown (52) and Corey Hightower (54). That is strange. They combined for three points, with Brown doing all of the lifting.
- Michael Redd is retiring today. Today is one of the better days to remember that he was very good at basketball.