The NBA’s No. 1 Pick Is Both a Blessing and a Curse

Karl-Anthony Towns always remembers the faith Flip Saunders placed in him—and, in turn, the promise he made to Flip Saunders back in 2015: that the Minnesota Timberwolves would rise again, thrive again, and someday dominate again.

“I told Flip early on,” Towns recalled, “I wanted to be here.”

Saunders, then the Wolves’ president and head coach, made Towns the first overall pick of the 2015 draft. And Towns embraced everything that came with it—all the accolades, all the expectations, all the burdens. “No. 1 picks,” Towns told The Ringer last week, “are supposed to take their franchises to new heights.”

Towns said this early in the Western Conference finals between Minnesota and the Dallas Mavericks. The Wolves were four wins away from their first trip to the NBA Finals. Towns was closer than he’d ever been to making good on his promise. A championship seemed in reach.

That vision has since become a faint flicker. The Wolves lost the first three games of the series—a deficit no NBA team has ever overcome. Although Minnesota rallied for a Game 4 win on Tuesday, the odds of winning the series remain daunting. That promise from long ago will almost certainly remain unfulfilled.

Towns has now been on the Timberwolves for nine seasons, an All-Star for four of them, and consistently one of the top-scoring bigs in the NBA. He’s been paired with two other no. 1 picks—Andrew Wiggins (2014) for four-plus seasons and Anthony Edwards (2020) for the past four. Yet before this year, Towns had not won a single playoff series. And now, even this exhilarating ride to the conference finals—punctuated by the Wolves’ shocking takedown of the defending champion Denver Nuggets—somehow feels like a failure.

That’s the thing about being the first pick of the NBA draft: The label and the outsized expectations never fade. “I guess it’s an honor,” Towns said last week. “You know it comes with pressure.”

It will surely come as little solace, but Towns has a lot of company—and I mean, a lot of company—as a former no. 1 who’s failed to lead his team to the mountaintop. If championships are the bar, there are far more failures than successes over the past three decades. By the strictest of definitions, the only two no. 1 picks since 1993 that have led their teams to the title are Tim Duncan and LeBron James.

Loosen the parameters a bit, and you might include Kyrie Irving, who won a title as LeBron’s costar in 2016; Anthony Davis, who raised a banner with LeBron in 2020; and Wiggins, who helped Stephen Curry win it all in 2022. A few other former no. 1s got rings as role players: Glenn Robinson (with Duncan in 2005), Andrew Bogut (with Curry in 2015), and Dwight Howard (with LeBron in 2020). But that’s it. End of list.

If we’re talking about no. 1 picks who were the clear no. 1 option on a title team, it’s really just Duncan and LeBron in the past 28 drafts. This isn’t to say that every other no. 1 was a bust—though many get tagged with the label—just that the vast majority never match the hype that greets them on draft night. Most never even make the Finals. Or win MVP. Or even become consistent All-NBA players.

Instead, the championship glory in recent years has been snatched by a second-round pick (Nikola Jokic in 2023), or the 15th pick (Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2021 and Kawhi Leonard in 2019), or the seventh pick (Stephen Curry in 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022). The 2024 Finals will feature a Boston Celtics team that stars two no. 3s (Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown) and, most likely, a Mavericks team headed by another no. 3 (Luka Doncic), with Irving as the secondary star.

Which raises the question: Is the first pick really all it’s cracked up to be? Is it worth all the breathless hype? The obsessive speculation? The tanking? Sure, every so often there might be a Kyrie (2011) or an AD (2012) or a Victor Wembanyama (2023). But if you’re more likely most years to get an Andrea Bargnani (2006) than a Blake Griffin (2009), what’s the point?

“I think actually the no. 1 pick in the NBA mostly has a perception problem,” said Daryl Morey, the Philadelphia 76ers president, “because there have been so many iconic players selected no. 1. And the fanfare around them is so large when they’re coming into the league that people remember that.”

In our collective consciousness, that mystique was set long ago, by legends like Oscar Robertson (no. 1 in 1960), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1969), and the late Bill Walton (1974). There have always been disappointments, of course (Kent Benson in 1977, Pervis Ellison in 1989), but for a time, the men at the top of the draft board consistently shined a little brighter.

In the 14-year span from 1979 to 1993, we saw four no. 1s who would win multiple titles as their team’s centerpiece: Magic Johnson (1979), Hakeem Olajuwon (1984), David Robinson (1987), and Shaquille O’Neal (1992). Several others would become Hall of Famers, including James Worthy (1982), Patrick Ewing (1985), and Chris Webber (1993).

But the past 25 years have been strewn with disappointments, from Kwame Brown (2001) to Greg Oden (2007) to Anthony Bennett (2013) to Markelle Fultz (2017). Some no. 1s found sustained stardom—Griffin, Derrick Rose (2008), John Wall (2010)—but hit a ceiling or were sapped by injuries. Even Deandre Ayton (2018), who made the 2021 Finals as the Phoenix Suns’ third-best player, now looks like another cautionary tale.

This isn’t just about championships, which generally require a costar (or two), a stout supporting cast, and a little luck. But even by a standard of individual accolades, our no. 1s fall short.

Of the 27 players chosen first from 1994 to 2020, just four have won MVP (Allen Iverson, Duncan, James, and Rose). Just nine of those players made All-NBA at least twice. Eleven made at least one Finals—but seven of them did so while attached to a better player. Of course, that group includes young stars like Zion Williamson (2019) and Edwards (2020), who have plenty of time left to make their mark.

Still, draft experts concede that—for all the modern advances in analytics, scouting, and video—the exercise remains as fraught as ever. “The draft, we know, is always a crapshoot,” said one longtime Eastern Conference scout. “Is it clear cut? Never.”

For decades, draftees mostly came via the NCAA, after multiple years in college, arriving in their early 20s. Then came the prep-to-pros era (1995-2005), followed by the so-called one-and-done era and the modern influx of international prospects, all of which infused the draft with more youth, uncertainty, and risk.

“The selection pool has doubled and tripled,” said another longtime scout. “In the ’80s and ’90s how many freshmen did you have coming into the draft? So you’re having to make decisions through a different lens 1716997713. How will Giannis translate from a third-division Greek team to the NBA? And how will this player who’s an 18-year-old develop into what we hope he will years from now? Those parts of the equation just weren’t a factor [in earlier eras].”

There’s a reason “re-drafts” have become a favorite staple of every NBA website and podcast over the past 20 years: Because most drafts, in retrospect, are littered with whiffs, gaffes, guesses, and overreaches. With the benefit of hindsight, very few no. 1s remain no. 1.

Even now, the draft is “definitely more art than science,” said Morey, who generally prides himself on the science part.

Six years ago, at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Morey posited that the NBA, collectively, had become worse at drafting. Although he hasn’t revisited the data recently, Morey said that’s probably still the case.

“I do know that we’ve gotten to more of a consensus [on the draft order], so we’re all collectively dumb now,” he said with a laugh. “I do know the top 20 of the mock drafts has been pretty stable. And then it sort of explodes after 20 into lots of opinions.”

And yet, Morey said, all the volatility is “very good for the league,” and perhaps one of the reasons for this modern age of parity. If teams can get stars like Tyrese Haliburton at no. 12, or Devin Booker at no. 13, or Jalen Brunson at no. 33, or (as Morey did) Tyrese Maxey at no. 21, it gives teams across the spectrum a chance to get better. And it creates an even greater argument (along with the league’s reformed lottery odds) against tanking.

“Between the draft (lottery) reform and the fact it’s hard to predict, it does allow you to have a competitive team and have a reasonable chance that you might pick a very, very good player,” Morey said.

Four weeks from now, the Atlanta Hawks are slated to make the top pick in the 2024 draft—from a class that’s been derided as the worst since 2013, when Cleveland took Bennett with the top pick. As we now know, there was a future superstar lurking in 2013 (Antetokounmpo), along with a future defensive ace (Rudy Gobert, taken no. 27). The same will undoubtedly be true of this draft class, scouts said. We just won’t know who the stars will be for a few years.

“If there ever was a year where you would say, ‘I’m OK with the fourth or fifth pick instead of 1,’ it would be this one,” said the second longtime scout.

In the meantime, the Wolves and their two no. 1s will try to defy the odds (and recent history) and revive their championship hopes. It will take more performances like Tuesday’s, when Towns put up 25 points on 9-of-13 shooting and Edwards put up a near triple-double (29 points, 10 rebounds, 9 assists)—stats befitting a pair of proud top picks.

“I came in with an expectation,” Towns said last week, “and every day I’m trying to not only meet that expectation, but surpass it.”

A championship would validate it all—and put Towns and Edwards on what has become a shockingly exclusive list. But if they never do win it all, it won’t necessarily be a failure—just the typical outcome for the modern no. 1 pick.