Yeah def when he let Brunson walk after not taking a cheap opportunity to extend him

Oh wait, there’s other stuff too?

Fuck Fatprick Dumont and his evil mother Mariam Adolfson, they ruined our franchise

As a Kings fan you never should’ve had the opportunity to fuck it up in the first place. #fuckvlade

Drafting Taco Charlton instead of TJ Watt has to be up there too.

Phil Jackson as President of Basketball Operations

When the Nets moved from the ABA to the NBA, the Knicks demanded compensation for invading their territory, I think initially asking for $4 million. The Nets countered by offering the Knicks Dr. J because they couldn’t afford to offer him a fair contract anyway.

The Knicks declined…

The Sixers bought his contract for $3 million.

Should be noted that after he was fired for Sexual Harrassment Dolan made him president of the Liberty years later.

The bad man can’t hurt us anymore

Nah Kevin Knox over SGA way worse

Likewise.

Yea either this or the big 3 with Dwight and Nash. But I don’t blame the FO for the big 3 not working, more a mix of injuries and personalities clashing with Dwight/Kobe. But the Westbrook trade took a championship level roster into wasting what’s left of lebrons career.

Recency bias but the entire handling of the 2020 roster post-chip was pretty horrible. Letting Caruso walk for THT, Westbrook trade, signing a bunch of other big names on the verge of retirement. Horrible draft picks.

Big bright spot tho is finding Reaves

Nah, alienating Jerry West is the genesis of any modern problem we’ve had

You think that’s the worst decision the lakers have ever made? 

Edit Since people keep asking me for a better answer I’ll put here since other comment has been strangely downvoted to hell by people who irrationally hate Westbrook. Things that come to mind in lakers very long history: the mosgov and deng contracts, the kwame brown trade, im sure i could think of more. 

Mozgov and Deng?

That was my initial thought but I don’t think it’s the franchise’s worst, just the most recent one.

Probably still not the worst one ever, but picking Lonzo Ball over Tatum has to be near the top.

Keep talking about my squad, our personnel ages, the way they play, we’re past our time in this league, etc etc etc!! Do me one favor PLEASE!!!! And I mean PLEASE!!!! 🙏🏾 Keep that same narrative ENERGY when it’s begins! That’s all I ask. #ThankYou 👑

Think for you guys, like us, the worst decision was your beloved historic owner dying. very poor choice on our parts

That’s what I came to say. 

Crazy to me that this does not come up more as an all time bad trade. The Bucks gave up a first too!

That trade is definitely number one but number two does go to picking Tractor Traylor over Dirk.

Biggest one in recent memory is passing on Luka. Second biggest one in recent memory is trading Haliburton. Third biggest one in recent memory is assembling the Sacramento Bulls.

Yes and bagley over Luka 😢

Slightly disagree. One of the smartest decisions was not signing Boogie to a super max extension and trading him for what would become Fox. Drafting Fox and selling him at his peak was smart. What they traded him for was horrendous but the idea was not a bad idea. They’ve made some wise draft choices over the years (Peja, White Chocolate, Tyreke Evans (unlucky with injuries), Boogie, Fox, Halli). Also the ‘02 Kings were a David Stern/referees sneeze away from a very legit shot at a chip - can’t blame the Kings for the league’s conspiracy.

But yea, generally bad draft assessments, very poor asset management, squandering development, conveyor belt of coaches (two of whom very recently then went on to get chips with other teams). Bagley over Luka ostensibly because Luka needed a bigger market (Vlade’s words) is insane. Thank Nico for helping make us not seem like the worst team associated with Luka.

Not to mention ownership who went the way of Rachel Phelps in Major League to then sell to an egomaniac who once seriously suggested 4 on 5 defense to leave a cherry picker for offense. But at least they stayed in Sac. The Draymond stomp game is one of the best live sporting events I have ever been to.

Drafting LaMarcus Aldridge and then trading him for Tyrus Thomas on draft night is probably at the top of the list

The D Rose era had its moments

#1 has to be not resigning everyone in ‘98.

#2 trading Elton Brand (a rookie who avg 20 and 10), for Eddie curry and Tyson chandler, derailing the franchise for about ten years.

#3 not pulling the trigger on the Kobe Bryant deal in ‘08

#4 basically every draft choice besides d-rose

AND Oden over KD

Sam Bowie used to be a customer of mine and the guy couldn’t be nicer. 

Shaq was walking no matter what. The Duncan thing though, yeah, he was coming except for that.

How would you have kept Shaq though? Seems like he wanted to leave.

I was gonna say letting Schultz buy the team. lol

Selling to Clay Bennett. Fucking Schultz.

closely followed by the OKC medical staff rescinding the Tyson Chandler trade.

Definitely. One more year and there’s a good chance you clinch the championship with prime Harden, Westbrook, and KD.

For sure. 2nd place goes to reneging on a Tyson Chandler trade when his medicals came back a lil funky back in 2009. Would have saved us from enduring Kendrick Perkins all those years, and then maybe we don’t have to trade Harden for salary.

3rd place goes to trading Wiggins 😞

Four hall of famers in the top 5 picks and the Pistons come from out of nowhere to take a foreign developmental project

That’s not how I remember it at all. The Darko workout hype in the lead-up to the draft was huge. I swear it was viewed as LeBron the clear number 1 and then a toss-up between Darko and Melo for number 2. But I was also just a teenager watching ESPN.

That’s rewriting history. I remember that summer the hype was that Darko could turn out like a Dirk or a Pau Gasol type player and wouldn’t need to speedrun his development because the Pistons were already front loaded with a win now team. So they could take their time with him. Drafting a Carmelo or Wade would have meant having to figure out Rip Hamilton.

No, it wasn’t. He was a near consensus number two pick at the time. Obviously in retrospect, it looks terrible, but the league saw Darko as having a very high ceiling.

I remember I bought a Syracuse Carmelo poster at the Scholastic book fair at school that year because I was certain he was going to be a Piston.

Marc Stein was doing tricks on it throughout the draft process. They were picturing his ceiling like Jokic is now.

And yet they won the championship the next year. Crazy world

You mean SGA and your franchise’s future for PG?? 😭😭

It was actually PG for a bunch of picks, Gallinari, and SGA was like the outlier in that trade.

Also in essence it was a trade for Kawhi and PG because Kawhi wasn’t going to sign with the clippers unless they made the trade.

In hindsight, not great. But at the time? Not terrible

Turning Moses Malone and the number 1 pick of the 1986 NBA draft into Roy Hinson, the less good Cliff Robinson, and a broken Jeff Ruland didn’t work out particularly well.

The Mikal Bridges one is the absolute worst by a mile. All the rest are bad for one or two reasons, that one is bad for so many!

I nominate the Joe Smith deal.

Rubio is fine, I don’t think anybody in the world projected Steph above Rubio prior to the draft. Rubio was supposed to be a global superstar wunderkind.

Johnny Flynn though …

Joe Smith is yours. Pretty much guaranteed your ceiling was mediocrity for the foreseeable future.

Rubio was only a bad pick in hindsight. Everyone had him highly ranked. Flynn was the major blunder but still second to breaking the rules for Joe Smith.

Flynn had a hip injury that basically ended his career that no one ever brings up when talking about him

Jonny Flynn had a solid rookie year but the hip injury and surgery he got the following summer ruined everything. If not for that, Flynn could have had a career as good as Rubio’s, if not better.

Also, Steph Curry and his dad told the Wolves not to draft him.

It set the Bucks back by a decade

There was still a vocal minority who thought you always took the big man.

Man, that is indeed tough to believe. Think he was sincere or just pioneering take-artistry?

In the Pels defense, they tried to make a different trade first. I don’t remember what happened with that.

Can we skip the question please?

We certainly have a few

We would be a dynasty if they gave out rings for missing on generational draft picks.

Hiring Nico and trading Luka is a package deal so I’d agree

i don’t think i’ve ever heard anyone call him steven

Rephrase “trading Haliburton for Sabonis” to, instead, “choosing Fox over Haliburton.” If you got Sabonis for Fox instead I think Sabonis and Haliburton play well together.

I would say signing Richard Jefferson cost more. Lost out on a few years of Manu/Parker/Duncan’s playing years.

And it didn’t even matter. Sign of a pretty fucking good organization if that’s the worst thing

Yeah the Knicks really messed up on this one. It was no secret that Melo was locked in on going to NY that summer.

Gallinari, Mozgov, and Felton led the Nuggets to some good playoff runs after the trade. And the Knicks could have easily kept them all if they had waited another 6 months instead

As shitty as this was, if you go back and look at that draft it was tough to pick anyone else.

Haliburton and Maxey are the only two other studs in that draft (Ant was #1 so not a factor in the decision to draft Wiseman).

Warriors had both Steph and Poole at the time, so drafting another guard when you just gave $100MM to a young guard wouldn’t make sense.

I do believe the Wiseman F’up was mostly due to that particular draft being weak AF

Definitely in retrospect but Beasley was a monster in college

Could score from anywhere and was a good rebounder

That was the first that came to mind but like you said, we did make the finals, and Ayton was arguably our most consistent player through the first two rounds of that run. Plus the Valley-Oop is like Suns canon now, that shit was awesome.

I think a potentially worse one was Markieff Morris over Kawhi Leonard. I remember being so pissed about that during the draft. We needed Leonard so bad and it would have totally changed the course of our mid-2010s dark ages if we get him. Although that’s assuming he would have thrived in our infrastructure which is a big if. Especially at that time.

it’s Sarver cheaping out and not re-signing Joe Johnson.

But yeah Luka was a huge miss too; we had his coach Igor too at the time IIRC

Beal has to be 2nd, right?

It’s gotta be the Stepien era, they literally made a rule that you weren’t allowed to fuck up that badly lol

This is such recency bias that it kills me. You kids don’t even remember the dark days. The two timelines bullshit is a fucking pop rock in comparison to the nuclear bombs our management/ownership used to lob at us.

https://grantland.com/features/how-annoy-fan-base-60-easy-steps/

I think wording it as the Hornets drafted both those players and traded them is slightly misleading; realistically they had traded those picks and were just drafting on behalf of the lakers and clippers. So it’s more along the lines of they “passed” on both of those guys.

Still sucks regardless!

Imagine if you had him and traded him for nothing

I was just going to say Hasheem Thabeet. Didn’t realize all the players we could’ve had after him…

the crazy thing is that didnt even come to mind with all the other shit lol