Everyone knows that the Clippers have made some terrible draft picks in the past and they've been in the lottery more often than some people play the lottery. The past is painful for Clipper fans but let's take a look at some of the draft picks of the past decade with foresight being 20/20.
Let's start with 2001 (because Michael Jordan's second three-peat seems to be the only thing I remember from 1998). The Clippers ended up with the second pick and selected Compton's finest, Tyson Chandler and traded him for some guy. Who was the guy that was available as the third pick? Pau Gasol.
2002: The Clippers selected Chris Wilcox with the 8th pick. Who was the next player picked? Amar'e Stoudemire.
2003: Chris Kaman was arguably the best center in the draft, not counting Chris Bosh but hey Zaza Pachulia was available in the second round at number 42. He might be able to make more 1 ft. layups than Kaman and there's no way that Chris Kaman could have a better walk-off interview than Zaza.
2004: I liked the Shaun Livingston pick at the time, based on his potential and who wouldn't love to have a 6'7" point guard? Of course who wouldn't love having an All-Star point guard like the man who was selected one pick after Livingston: Devin Harris.
2005: Not a day goes by where a Clipper fan doesn't mention this draft. Forget All-Star Danny Granger who was selected at number 17, we want Yaroslav Korolev with our number 12 pick. Nothing more needs to be said.
2006: The Clippers only had second round picks which were used on Paul Davis and Guillermo Diaz. The Chronicles of Crotty favorite, Cheikh Samb was snagged by the Lakers one pick before Diaz. So close!
Let's stop there for a minute and put together our starting lineup.
C: Pau Gasol
F: Amar'e Stoudamire
F: Danny Granger
G: Devin Harris
G: Chris Kaman
This lineup has so much talent that Chris Kaman could play shooting guard to lower his chances of shooting layups.
Luckily, 2007 and 2008 were great years where the Clippers drafted well and selected the best available talent in 2007 with Al Thornton and 3 outstanding draft picks in 2008 in Eric Gordon, DeAndre Jordan and Mike Taylor. So it seems like after making mistake after mistake things are finally starting to change. The obvious first pick in 2009 is Blake Griffin, who is head and shoulders ahead of the competition. This time around, foresight will be 20/20 and I will go out on a limb here and say that the Clippers WILL continue the trend of making the best pick available where in this case "best pick" is an understatement.
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