Feast or Famine for No. 1 NBA Draft Picks in New Millennium

The first decade of the new millennium was one of extremes for No. 1 overall picks in the NBA Draft.

With a couple of exceptions, top picks from 2000-2009 were either superstars or super disappointments during their first few years in the league.

Kenyon Martin counts as one of those exceptions. The No. 1 overall pick in the year 2000 by the New Jersey Nets, Martin was hardly a superstar during his first 10 years in the league. "K-Mart" battled a variety of injuries, playing just two games during the 2006-07 season, but still put together a respectable career that made him an above-average forward.

Martin played his first four seasons with the Nets before joining the Denver Nuggets. Through 10 seasons, he had career averages of 10.0 points and 8.3 rebounds per game with one All-Star Game appearance (2004).

The other player who resides in between the extremes that defined most of the top picks from 2000-2009 is 2005 top pick Andrew Bogut.

Hardly a superstar and never an All-Star during his first five years in the league, the 7-foot center from Utah nevertheless put up impressive numbers for the Milwaukee Bucks, averaging 15.9 points and 10.2 rebounds. But injuries plagued Bogut, as well, and he missed 46 games during the 2008-09 season with a back injury before rebounding nicely the following year. Then, the injury bug bit again and Bogut broke his hand in a nasty fall with just 13 games left in the regular season. He missed the rest of the season, including Milwaukee's postseason run.

With the much-better-than-average Martin and Bogut out of the way, we can now focus on those extremes.

On the superstar side of the scale, there was Yao Ming, picked first in the 2002 draft by the Houston Rockets; LeBron James, first overall in 2003 by the Cleveland Cavaliers; Dwight Howard, No. 1 in 2004 by the Orlando Magic; and Derrick Rose, first overall in 2008 by the Chicago Bulls.

Each of these guys put together superstar résumés leading up to the 2010 NBA season, with All-Star Game appearances, a pair of NBA MVP awards for James, and Rookie of the Year honors for both Rose and James.

The other end of that scale is much less impressive. Based on their play in the first decade since the year 2000, No. 1 overall draft picks Kwame Brown (2001), Andrea Bargnani (2006), Greg Oden (2007) and Blake Griffin (2009) have been huge disappointments.

In the cases of Oden and Griffin, the disappointment hasn't been due to a lack of productivity on the court but rather a lack of time spent on it.

The Portland Trail Blazers improbably won the rights to draft Oden first overall in 2007, creating a sense of euphoria for the franchise and its fans, who still hadn't stopped cheering for Brandon Roy's Rookie of the Year award when Oden came to town.

The excitement was short-lived. The 7-foot center out of Ohio State didn't play a game his rookie season, undergoing microfracture knee surgery that sidelined him for the year. In 2008-09, Oden appeared in 61 games for the Blazers, missing a few weeks of action with knee and foot ailments, and in 2009-10, he played and started 21 games, averaging 11.1 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game before breaking his left kneecap and missing the rest of the season.

Griffin, the 2009 No. 1 pick by the Los Angeles Clippers, started his NBA career much the same way as Oden, missing his rookie season with a knee injury suffered during the team's final exhibition game.

If Oden and Griffin were disappointments merely based on what they couldn't do, Brown and Bargnani were disappointments based on what they didn't do.

Brown spent his first nine seasons in the NBA with five different teams, including two stints with the Los Angeles Lakers. He averaged just 6.7 points and 5.4 rebounds, respectable statistics for an NBA journeyman but certainly not the production Washington envisioned when it drafted him first overall in 2001. The 6-foot-11 center's best season was 2003-04 with Washington, when he averaged 10.9 points and 7.4 rebounds.

Unlike Brown, to call Bargnani a bust is almost unfair. The 7-foot center from Rome, who was drafted first overall by the Toronto Raptors in 2006, put up solid scoring statistics in his first four seasons in the league, averaging 13.7 points per game.

He finished the decade with a career-high 17.2-points-per-game average, but he was hardly the force a team looks for in a No. 1 overall pick. Bargnani's career rebounding average is a paltry 4.8 per game, and he wasn't the defensive presence the Raptors had hoped for. To his credit, Bargnani showed great defensive improvement in the latter part of the decade, blocking 1.4 shots per game and turning in a career-best 6.2 rebounds per game in 2009-10.

No. 1 NBA Draft Picks from 2000-2009
(Listed by year with player followed by NBA team and school or country in parentheses)
2009 - Blake Griffin, L.A. Clippers (Oklahoma)
2008 - Derrick Rose, Chicago Bulls (Memphis)
2007 - Greg Oden, Portland Trail Blazers (Ohio State)
2006 - Andrea Bargnani, Toronto Raptors (Italy)
2005 - Andrew Bogut, Milwaukee Bucks (Utah)
2004 - Dwight Howard, Orlando Magic (SW Atlanta Christian Academy, Georgia)
2003 - LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers (St. Vincent-St. Mary H.S., Ohio)
2002 - Yao Ming, Houston Rockets (China)
2001 - Kwame Brown, Washington Wizards (Glynn Academy)
2000 - Kenyon Martin, New Jersey Nets (Cincinnati)

Sources:
No. 1 NBA Draft Choices, NBA.com
Blake Griffin Profile, Yahoo! Sports
Kenyon Martin, NBA.com
Andrew Bogut, NBA.com
Derrick Rose, NBA.com
LeBron James, NBA.com
Blazers face another tough decision with injury-plagued Oden, Sports Illustrated
Kwame Brown, NBA.com
Andrea Bargnani, NBA.com