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Ranking: The Top 15 'What If' players in NBA history
What if the youngest league MVP in NBA history never blew out his knee?
What if the No. 1 pick in the 2002 NBA draft, an international superstar from another major global market, didn't see his prime end by the time he was 28?
What if the Boston Celtics dynasty of the '80s had extended into the '90s thanks to the No. 2 pick in the 1986 NBA draft?
What if the one-time all-time leading scorer in basketball had joined the NBA rather than spend his entire career playing at lower levels overseas?
The landscape of the NBA today could be so much different. It's time we look at the biggest what-ifs in NBA history.
15. Yao Ming
The No. 1 pick in the 2002 NBA draft, Yao Ming had a very solid run in the league, earning two 2nd Team All-NBAs and three 3rd Team All-NBAs in just seven-plus seasons. Over 486 appearances, Ming averaged 19.0 points, 9.2 rebounds and 1.9 blocks while shooting 52.4 percent from the floor. There was even a time when there was a debate about whether Yao was the best center in the league.
That's what makes the fact that his career was so injury-riddled that he only appeared in five games after the age of 28 all the more upsetting, and what makes him one of the biggest what-ifs of the 2000s.
A player of Yao's size – he was listed at 7-foot-6, 310 pounds – was always going to have a tough time staying healthy in a sport as tough on the joints as basketball. But one has to wonder how the big man's career might have unfolded if he didn't have to play as many minutes as he did for his National Team early on in his career.
Yao played in the 2000 Olympics as a 20-year-old, in the 2001, 2003 and 2005 FIBA Asian Cups (winning gold with China and MVP of all three tournaments), in the 2004 Olympics, in the 2006 World Championship (despite breaking his foot late in the 2005-06 season) and in the 2008 Olympics (after suffering a stress fracture in his foot in the 2007-08 season).
That amounts to an astonishing seven offseasons in which Ming played high-stakes basketball rather than rest. Mind you, his NBA career was only eight seasons (he played in just five games in his final campaign), just to show you how ridiculous – and borderline unnecessary – that feat was.
Allegiance to his beloved China aside, there is absolutely no way Yao should have played in at least half of those tournaments considering what his body had gone through prior to those summers. In fact, it was probably a little irresponsible of China to even let him play in some of those events, an irresponsibility that wound up costing Ming his playing career before he even turned 30.
Even despite the injuries, Ming performed extremely well at a lot of those tournaments, putting up 21 and nine in the '04 Olympics, leading all scorers at the 2006 World Championship at 25.3 points and 9.0 rebounds per game, and averaging 19 and eight at the '08 Olympics.
Ming looked fantastic at times in the NBA, too, peaking in 2006-07 when he averaged 25.0 points, 9.4 rebounds and 2.0 blocks, albeit in just 48 appearances. Thanks to his otherworldly size, coordination and soft touch, extending out to the midrange, he was an absolute load to defend, even at the NBA level.
14. Ben Wilson
At least Ming got a long and illustrious career to speak of.
That was unfortunately not the case for Ben Wilson, an elite prep prospect who was murdered in Chicago prior to his senior season. Wilson sadly passed away the day his high school team, Simeone, played in its opening game of the 1984-85 season, which was supposed to be Wilson's senior-year campaign.
The season prior, Wilson had helped lead Simeone to the state championship, no easy feat in a talent-rich state like Illinois, and was regarded by some recruiting services as the best player in the country heading into his senior year, with Indiana, DePaul and Illinois reportedly left remaining as his final three college choices. (Indiana won two national championships in the '80s, mind you.)
A high school head coach who had played against Wilson in the 1984 state title game, Lou Wool, said the following of Wilson to the Chicago Tribune:
After getting contrasting diagnoses on what was ailing him, Lewis ultimately passed away the following summer after a sudden cardiac event that occurred during a light offseason workout.
Without question, Lewis' passing was one of the biggest – and most sad – tragedies in NBA history.
The former Northeastern star was playing excellent basketball prior to his passing, with the likes of Brian Shaw and Larry Bird singing his praises in a 2013 ESPN article:
Unfortunately, missing cartilage in his knees that started to trouble him all the way back in college ultimately cut Roy's career short far sooner than it should have ended. By the age of 26, Roy was basically a role player and by the time he was 29, he was out of the NBA entirely.
What if Roy had stayed healthy? What if Oden had, too, for that matter? How good could that group of Blazers been? A major what-if in NBA history of the 2010s. (Also, it's become clear in this article that few teams have had worse luck than Portland. Sorry, Blazer fans.)
6. Arvydas Sabonis
Big man Arvydas Sabonis' list of accolades is as lengthy as it is impressive, even if the majority of his hardware stemmed from his time playing in Europe. Even so, his game on the international scene still allowed him to reach mythical status for fans based in the U.S., leading many to wonder to this day: What if the elder Sabonis had come to the NBA earlier on in his career prior to all of the injury troubles?
Sabonis' peak actually didn't last that long as he was physically pretty shot by the age of 23, which even caused him to miss some FIBA tournaments very early on, something that overseas stars try to avoid at all costs. Even so, he led the Soviet Union to gold medal showings at the 1985 Eurobasket tournament, at the 1988 Olympic. He also won two Spanish league titles and a Euroleague championship with Real Madrid in the early '90s, along with a slew of other awards, both individual accolades and team-based ones.
Despite being a 7-foot-3, 280-pound behemoth, Sabonis was uniquely skilled with his playmaking and dribbling ability, a bruiser down low but who was also very athletic in his prime, all of which allowed him to reach legendary status in Europe before coming over to the States. Just watch him shatter a backboard on a dunk in the first clip below:
However, once he finally did decide to go to the NBA for the 1995-96 season to join the team that drafted him all the way back in 1986, Portland, Sabonis' body was pretty broken down. The Blazers' team physician took a look at the big man's X-ray and said Sabonis would have qualified for handicapped parking.
Hall-of-Fame head coach George Karl, who just missed out on coaching Sabonis at Real Madrid, talked about how Sabonis' game and body changed as the injuries took their toll on him over the years:
Even so, Hardaway was still healthy enough the following season to appear in 59 games. He averaged 20.5 points, 5.6 assists and 1.6 steals that campaign to earn All-Star and 3rd Team All-NBA honors. That was Orlando's first year after O'Neal's departure, and yet Hardaway still performed well enough to get the Magic into the playoffs.
After that is when things fell off the rails for Hardaway, however, as the once-explosive guard suffered a major knee injury in 1997-98, still in the midst of his prime as a 26-year-old, and from then on, his magic as a player was gone. From his age-28 season onward, Hardaway didn't earn a single accolade and by the time he was 32, he was a role player averaging fewer than 10 points nightly.
Hardaway could have been an all-time great, looking like he was very clearly on a Hall-of-Fame trajectory over his first five seasons. Instead, he's now more of a cult hero for older NBA fans.
Hardaway staying healthy might not have changed much on the overall NBA landscape as O'Neal left for the brighter lights of L.A. before Hardaway even got injured for the first time anyway. Then again, had Hardaway stayed healthy and been able to team up with the next player on our list in Orlando, things might have gotten interesting for the Magic.
3. Derrick Rose
It’s hard to come up with many bigger what-ifs in NBA history than Derrick Rose, a league MVP by his third season who, due to major knee injuries, would earn just one All-Star distinction, and never get another All-NBA spot, after the age of 22, which is just hard to fathom in hindsight.
Sure, his MVP win may have been aided by a couple of outside factors. For one, the anti-LeBron James sentiment at the time, as James was by far the best player in the world back then but had just spurned his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers to join a loaded Miami Heat squad and chase rings on South Beach. Basically, that meant voters weren’t going to give James MVP honors in 2010-11 no matter what. What’s more, Rose’s Chicago Bulls unexpectedly earned the No. 1 seed in the East in 201-11 after going 62-20 with Rose leading the way on offense at 25.0 points and 7.7 assists per game, giving MVP voters a clear other-than-James choice in the vote that year.
Regardless, there’s no question that that campaign by Rose was magical. And if he had been able to maintain that level of play without getting hurt, we could be talking about a Top 15 point guard career of all-time. Rose even might have been able to battle it out with Stephen Curry to have been considered the point guard of the 2010s had he stayed healthy. That might sound ridiculous now but Rose does remain the youngest MVP winner in league history, earning the honor as a 22-year-old, after all. Who knows if he might have been able to win another one had he not gotten hurt?
Instead, multiple major knee injuries meant that Rose was only able to appear in 49 combined games over the two seasons following his MVP year. Even when he finally returned full-time, he was never able to recover that early career form, leaving us with one of the biggest basketball what-ifs of this century.
2. Grant Hill
Younger NBA fans may not know this but Grant Hill was an outrageously good basketball player. Some even called him LeBron James before LeBron James, and though that may sound like sacrilege now, there may be some truth to it, especially if you look at the Duke legend's numbers early on in his career.
Hill had a four-year stretch from his second season to his sixth season in which he rarely missed action while performing like one of the best players in the league, putting up 21.9 points, 8.1 rebounds, 6.5 assists and 1.6 steals on 47.6 percent shooting. A point forward who could do it all at a high level, including score, rebound, create and defend, it makes sense why some consider Hill to be the original LeBron point-forward archetype.
Overall, in six seasons with the Detroit Pistons, Hill was a five-time All-Star, had one 1st Team All-NBA and four 2nd Team All-NBAs and finished third in the MVP vote in 1996-97. It looked like he was well on his way to at least one MVP award if he continued on that trajectory.
Then, Hill decided to sign with the Orlando Magic in 2000 to team up with Tracy McGrady and potentially Tim Duncan to form what would have been an All-time Big Three. But Duncan then decided to re-sign with the San Antonio Spurs instead and Hill, well, didn't exactly live up to his end of the bargain, although it's impossible to blame him for that.
Hill would appear in just 47 games in his first three seasons with the Magic before missing the entirety of his age-31 campaign, 2003-04, due to serious ankle problems. Doctors had to go so far as to re-fracture his ankle to re-align his leg in early 2003, a procedure that almost cost Hill potentially more than just his playing career, as an MRSA infection in his leg after the surgery forced him to spend a week in the hospital and take antibiotics through an IV for six months to recover.
By the time Hill was healthy enough to play in 2004-05 for the Magic, McGrady was already gone, traded to the Houston Rockets for Steve Francis. Hill was so good that in his first year back healthy, he was named an All-Star once more, averaging 19.7 points on 50.9 percent shooting in '05.
But more injury problems plagued Hill in 2005-06 when he was already 33, and he was never able to return to that star form again. (To his credit, Hill played until he was 40 and was an excellent role player for the Phoenix Suns in the late 2000s and early 2010s.)
Another sad case of injuries ruining an elite player's prime.
Hill was so good, though, that he eventually was named to the Hall of Fame anyway. Even so, it's unfortunate his Orlando stint was so marred with different injury problems because the Hill-McGrady duo could have changed the landscape of the NBA in the 2000s. That could have been an outright championship tandem.
1. Len Bias
No question, the most tragic story, and the biggest what-if in NBA history, is that of Len Bias. The No. 2 pick in the 1986 NBA draft, Bias joined the Celtics with huge expectations after an illustrious college career at Maryland. Bias really peaked in his senior campaign in college, a season that saw him earn consensus 1st Team All-American honors after he led the ACC in scoring at 23.2 points per game to go with 7.0 rebounds on 54.4 percent shooting.
In an article that was published by the Washington Post the day before Bias tragically passed away due to a cocaine-induced heart attack, Celtics front office members raved about their new forward's potential, going so far as to compare him to Jordan, who had been drafted just two years prior and faced Bias while in college:
Bird talked about Bias more in-depth in his book, Drive: The Story of My Life (via SportsCasting):
In his book, Bird recalled the Celtics wanting to get his input on Bias. He remembered Red Auerbach and K.C. Jones asking him during the 1986 NBA Finals to watch a little film of Bias and give his thoughts. “Len could obviously jump and run, and he also had a tough streak in him,” Bird wrote. “He looked like he really wanted to win, and I thought he’d be a great addition to our team. Red even asked me if I would be willing to come to rookie camp in August to work with him if we drafted him. I told him yes, that I would look forward to it. “We drafted him. The next morning I was in the shower when Dinah came in and said, ‘I don’t know whether or not to believe this, but someone just called and said Lenny Bias died of a heart attack.'” Like most, Bird was stunned. “I called the Celtics office, and they told me he had collapsed and had been rushed to the hospital but hadn’t made it. I issued a statement through (agent) Mr. (Bob) Woolf’s office, saying it was the cruelest thing I ever heard. “There’s no question Len’s death was a tragic loss to everyone and a sadness we will all carry with us.”
In all, Bias' passing was a tragedy for reasons that go beyond basketball, and his loss is still felt to this day.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Ranking: The Top 15 'What If' players in NBA history
