Tony Allen on Hasheem Thabeet: “He was a bad young fella for me. He didn’t listen. When I got to Memphis, his hard headed ass didn’t listen to s**t.”
Every time Hasheem Thabeet comes up, I’m reminded he went #2 overall ahead of Harden, Curry, and DeRozan. Absolutely wild in hindsight.
He’s gotta be in the conversation for worst draft pick ever because of who he was picked before. At least Sam Bowie has the health excuse and how it was always a big man’s league before that point. Thabeet just sucked ass.
Tbf to Portland they had drafted Drexler the year before so they already had a hall of fame shooting guard.
Drexler didn’t even play much as a rookie and was not a top 10 pick. No one knew how good he would be. They did have Jim Paxson, an All NBA SG that same season though.
Portland knew how good he would be
Draft Jordan, play him at center
He seems to be cut from the same cloth as Olowokandi. Fascinating prospect but just uncoachable. It’s wild to see someone just wired that way and just wasting a great opportunity.
Fascinating prospect
Once DeJuan Blair went off for a 20-20 game at UConn and made Thabeet look like a clown the entire night, the fascination really should have went away.
Other than size and “he blocks a lot of shots”, there was little to Thabeet’s game.
That game was glorious. Loved watching Blair destroy Thabeet
with no ACLS!
It was obvious to every ball knower after that game that Thabeet would be a bust. Memphis just had a horrible front office.
Two days before that game he put up 25/20/9 on 77% shooting and was responsible for 44% of UConn’s points. There was definitely justification to the hype.
I remember being pissed the Spurs ended up with Blair. I thought they got a steal again lol
As a Georgetown fan I hated watching Blair play against them as a kid, but he was an amazing undersized big. A terrific rebounder in the mold of Reggie Evans but a bit more skilled offensively. I thought he’d found his niche being on the Spurs but he just didn’t last long in the league as it thought he would….
….But he at least lasted longer than Thabeet. 🙃🙂
Kandi was at least productive for a couple of years. Thabeet was just ass all around.
Thabeet was definitely Anthony Bennett tier
Productive? He averaged 45% TS as a 7 fucking footer, don’t let PPG fool you, he shot 42% as a center without 3s
You give Thabeet 12 shots he would average 12 points too, teams just realized he’s ass and benched and cut him because modern basketball wasn’t as stupid as when Olowokandi was playing letting a 7 footer be the one of the most inefficient players ever
Olowokandi had awful hands, very hard to coach that, he had brick hands
Kandiman didnt start playing ball until he was 18 and he was ok on the wolves not great not terrible but ok.
Anthony Bennett is the worst, remember it took like 15 games for him to score a fucking point.
Sounds like dude just coasted his way into the NBA lottery like how some students just coast their way into college but flunk out because they never had to learn to study.
That was almost me. I barely ever did homework in school but was good at the tests, so my grades always came out good. Learning how to actually study in college was incredibly hard.
Having to basically do that, but competing against 400 of the best and most disciplined people in the world would be a disaster.
Very smart comment!
I have no idea why you would get a single downvote for it…..wtf, Reddit users?
Anthony Bennett man
Conversation. Atleast Bennett didn’t have an attitude issue.
Also that draft fuckin sucked. The best players in the lottery were Oladipo, who was good for like two years then got wrecked by injuries, and a handful of strong role players like McCollum and Adams. Giannis went 15th and Gobert 27th but the Cavs weren’t really missing out on that much among the top guys as compared to a stacked draft like 09.
Yeah but also the Bennett pick was out of nowhere making it extra bad. And also how down the list to do you have to go to find a worse player than Bennett
The answer to that is Lucas Nogueira at 16. And then Livio Jean-Charles at 28 (pretty good career overseas and still playing, just never came over to the NBA), and then Nemanja Nedovic at 30 (great overseas career too). So you could say Anthony Bennett ranks in the 27th to 30th range despite being taken first.
You say that draft sucked and then you list two hofers with other borderline HOF players.
Neither of them were in the conversation for the 1st overall pick. Of players who would have been seriously considered, Olidipo really the only one that turned into something. It was such at bad draft at the top.
The draft itself didn’t suck though like he said. It was an average draft it just more shows how hard it is to evaluate players. The draft actually produced a decent amount of players who stuck in the league but Bennett being at the top makes it look bad.
It’s pretty obvious what they mean. They are talking about Bennett as the no.1 pick. Giannis was never in consideration for any team in the top 5 so he’s a non factor.
He said the draft fucking sucked. It was an average draft. The first pick fucking sucked.
Yeah, it was so bad that even with those two HOFers it was still the worst draft of the decade.
And no, 0x All Stars CJ McCollum and Steven Adams are not remotely close to borderline HOFers.
Either way Cj was putting up over 20 a game while being the Robin to Dames Batman. He wasn’t a role player. Adam’s was the defensive anchor of the Okc teams. Then you have people like Schorder, Pope, Porter Jr and about ten others on that list who stuck in the league and even started for a while. That is just the first round of that draft. That class probably doesn’t even make the worst top five draft classes ever let alone the worst.
I feel he only gets forgotten about because he went #2.
He’s forgotten because he didn’t do anything meaningful on the league.
Surely Michael Olowokandi clears Thabeet.
Thabeet was worse than the Candyman. Depends how much weight you put on no.1 pick vs no.2
Olowokandi had much better players picked after him, had a much larger body of work as far as bad play (career .435 FG%, 4.6 fouls and 2.7 turnovers per 75 possessions career, heavily negative assist-to-turnover ratio), did not play to his skillset or utilise his awesome physique or athleticism properly (25.21% of his career FGA came from 10-3PT, and he shot a woeful .290 on those mid-range shots, and shot just .484 inside 10FT for his career too), and apparently wouldn’t listen to Kareem’s personal coaching when he was a special assistant with the Clippers.
Kandi probably didnt even know who Kareem was, people forget that he never played nor touched a basketball until he was 18 now go look how old he was when he was drafted.
Seriously I always wonder why he isn’t brought up more
Jordan was a much better prospect than any of the players chosen after Thabeet, which makes me see the Bowie pick as way worse.
2009 was a weird draft, the lottery was super point guard heavy, and the Grizz were pretty unlikely to take a point guard (since they already had Mike Conley and none of the prospects were seen as can’t-miss). Obviously no one knew Curry and Harden would develop into MVP level propsects, but I don’t think Jordan developing that way surprised anyone.
Oddly I see the Wolves passing on Curry twice to take Flynn and Rubio was objectively worse, since they desperately needed a point guard, drafted two, and missed out on far and away the best.
As long as Anthiny Bennett exists there cant possibly be a worse draft pick.
People sometimes exaggerate draft busts when in reality the draft class just isn’t that strong around them.
This is what a real draft bust looks like.
It’s moments like this that forever make me laugh at fans that get insanely hyped about how their team did on draft night immediately after and start posting fantasy land depth charts with their team’s picks to show how good they’ll be next season
Warriors fans claiming they won the draft when they got Kuminga and Moody will never not be funny to me
Laughs in Scottie Barnes
Magic fans trolling us too lmao
They were good picks, Moody in particular. Kuminga has the talent but Kerr also fucked up his development. No Warriors fan you ever met told anyone they won that draft, on that note.
Worst part of Kuminga was 2022-2023. That was Kerr’s worst coaching job as the Warriors coach. He was playing Anthony Lamb, an accused gang rapist who would bark back at Curry and Green, over Kuminga and several others. Lamb was extremely bad and was a gunner. He hasn’t even been in the NBA again since that season. Kerr should’ve prioritized minutes for anyone except Lamb. I honestly don’t know why he was even on the team.
Kuminga is just ass. He doesn’t want to develop, and now, everyone knows it. He has no bbiq, and his attitude sucks.
This has nothing to do with this thread or current topic, but Kuminga hands down has the worlds greatest agent and publicist of all time… I can’t believe someone who has done has little as him has been able to stay relevant in the news cycle as well as he has for his entire career, even after the Warriors finally traded him! It’s insane to me how much publicity he’s gotten in the media as if he was a superstar player in waiting, and just needed a new team… then he got a new team after years of that, was mid, and somehow still has been able to stay relevant in the current FA market as some huge sought after player that contenders are all salivating over in spite of the fact that it’s almost August and he still doesn’t have a team
Yet, has a couple of 20 point playoff games (hell, averaged 20 vs Minny) and has had stretches where he’s averaged in the 20s in the regular season as well. The issue isn’t he talent and athleticism, it’s entirely mental and how he approaches the game. As a raw talent, he was very promising. Can be a very good defender (see Atlanta vs NYK this postseason).
His basketball IQ, as you say, is abysmal. One of the problems he had last year was that he would need an entire first half to be able to understand how the other team was playing. I can’t think of another basketball player who had that exact problem. He doesn’t understand the game easily. Part of that is on Kerr, who had total dregs playing a head of him in the past.
From a coaching perspective, you work with what you have, and Kerr prioritized even more flawed players of less potential than Kuminga - most notoriously Lamb.
Holdup what?! I thought I knew ball but who in the blue hell is Anthony Lamb?! And wtf did he do?!
Anthony Lamb is some F tier ballhog loser who Kerr gifted minutes he should’ve spent developing Moody and Kuminga. The Smush Parker of the Warriors, except Smush Parker was never accused of being a gang rapist in college.
Literally shocked I don’t remember this dude at all. The amount of games I watch every season is absurd, and I play in multiple deep ass fantasy leagues, where I’m constantly obsessed with the waiver wire. Maybe I just chose to ignore him over the rape stuff
Edit: like I’m so obsessed and on the spectrum that I literally read every single box score every single night, and study every team. And legitimately watch at least 75% of games every season (granted I’ll have multiple going at once with a 4 monitor setup) I legitimately take pride in how close I follow all 30 teams as sad as it sounds.. and yet I don’t remember this piece of shit AT ALL
He averaged like 20mpg and was out of the league for good right after. Hasn’t played a single NBA game since, and Kerr was playing him 20 mpg lol
I remember when he was playing for the Warriors I was like “who’s this rookie?” but it was his third season in the league hahaha, so don’t worry, he was very fogotable
Was a pretty big story that year.
Pretty sure the spurs dropped him before GSW picked him up after all the rape stuff waa known.
honestly i think they were good picks they were just never “allowed to play” outside the structure of curry land
Moody was playing great last year before the injury
yes but rn moody is just a role player when he could of been a tad more
Dude averaged 5 blocks in college and was extremely lengthy. He just didn’t have the drive to get better tbh
Mo Bamba is similar although he’s considerably better
He only averaged 13.6 PPG as a junior center in college and was lower before that. That’s extremely low for a junior center of his age to the point he was a negative offensive prospect, with or without drive. I don’t think he ever would have been that good. Players like Zach Edey were over 20 PPG as a junior as you expect to be way more offensively dominant if you are an older center drafted that high. Ayton was over 20 PPG as a freshman with no drive. I feel like this could easily have been avoided in the analytics era, as players like Harden drafted after him had way better age adjusted analytics.
Why are you comparing him to Edey and Ayton? Thabeet was always, and projected to be, a defensive player. Mutumbo averaged 11 as a junior and turned out fine. Alonzo Mourning averaged 16 as a junior. Joakim Noah averaged 12.
Almost like college rules let him just camp under the basket…
cant teach size baby
This one was especially bad, because so many of us thought he was awful in college. I still have no idea why this man even went top 15. He looked like a later first rounder/2nd round guy.
Well not awful, but no where near good enough to be rated as a future star. Dude was brick footed and brick handed.
It was wild in foresight too. No big man who gets judo-flipped in a college game should ever be a lottery pick.
He’s 28.57% E
And 21.43% H
I mean, why don’t you go judging 17yr olds future basketball career?
[deleted]
They did not have Zbo, the Clippers traded Zbo to the Grizzlies to create room for Blake to play right away.
Nah you draft best player available and figure it out later. Except he shouldn’t have been a first rounder
He averaged 5 blocks a game because he’s 7 3 and most centers in college are like 6 8. And he just camped in the paint. He had no offensive game. He’s a guy you take a flyer on in the 2nd or end of 1st because “you can’t teach size”.
Thabeet wasn’t even close to the best player available. He was just touted as this elite defensive big for no real reason other than size and block stats.
Under 500 career points for a pick that high is so crazy
James Wiseman is over 1300 💪
Here’s a list of players that played over 16k total minutes in their NBA career and were selected AFTER Thabeet:
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 7/29/2026.
That’s fancy, what do you click to export a table like that? Possible on phone interface?
Link at bottom says link created by bballref.com, I don’t know why he’s being so shady with the 411 😄
Yeah I see it’s from there, just wondering the steps involved and if it works well on mobile
Can’t tell ya man sorry
hard headed ass definitely didn’t help points tally
His game relied on being more dominant than everyone else, he was unskilled and lacked any footwork or touch around the basket. Not to mention he had cinderblocks for feet.
I remember the video of him training with Yao Ming and he couldn’t stop bricking hook shots 5 feet from the basket. Yao looked like he was questioning his life watching it
Dejuan Blair was almost a foot shorter and owned him every time
And had no ACLs!
Just a patella of scraps!
He did it in a community gym. With a box of scraps!
And he was still a better NBA player than Thabeet!
Fun fact: Dejuan Blair had no ACL in either of his knees and ended up staying in the league for several years
Fucking loved Dejuan and always termed him Hasheem Thabitch
Core memory unlocked of then Dejuan flipped Hasheem over his back
Hasheem Thabeet vs. DeJuan Blair
Gosh, look at that Sportcenter layout
Beautiful
Thats All American DeJuan Blair thank you very much
I remember when they went head to head for the first hyped up match and DeJuan CRUSHED him. It was embarrassing. Dude got exposed.
When he flipped that bum over his shoulder in college I knew it was over for him. So of course my favorite team drafted him.
Hell ya brother
No talent, zero heart, dumb as a fucking rock.
Sharp as a cueball, that one
Didn’t he almost down in 3 inches of water at the Dejuan Blair exhibit?
I mean, not everyone can do the hook shot. There’s a reason, for example, Giannis never does this.
In the open gym though not even in game
Giannis can hit a hook in practice
https://youtu.be/kDdVQN7xEuI?t=53&is=OLO7lJSjF7xkn_Ju
For those that don’t know, harden and curry pulled an Ace Bailey on us, and dodged our workouts/interviews.
Our GM wanted to draft Harden anyway, but our former owner was sold on Thabeet.
One of the worst draft picks of all time. Harden was so close to being part of the grit and grind era.
You think a Memphis Harden keeps him defensively engaged as his offensive responsibilities increase🧐. Was actually taking assignments and doing his thing in OKC, but that kinda went out the window from 13-16
I’m very curious about an alternate universe where Harden is drafted by the Grizz. Does he still become an all time offensive engine, does he still have the yips in crunch time, slightly worse on O, but more consistent on O, or just the same old harden. World will never know sadly
Depends, how are the strip clubs in Memphis?
If Marcus Smart is telling the truth about the beauty of Memphis Women, then bad
So, are you saying the alternate universe version of James Harden on the Grizz could’ve challenged for GOAT status?
He was so ass for the Grizzlies he’d best stop talking about Memphis so people can forget he showed up and shot about 40% from the floor
His career jumped straight into the toilet at age 29 and he wants to take digs at Memphis on his way out like he wasn’t one of the worst starters in the NBA while he was there
He wasn’t even a starter. He was benched pretty early in the season for a rookie who was the 39th overall pick.
He played 39 games for the Grizz and started 26 of them
And got benched for Wells.
Nobody was ever questioning that lol
He didn’t really get to the next level until Rockets hired Dantoni so I doubt we ever see that run where he’s putting up 50 bombs regularly, unless Grizz somehow hired Dantoni lol
Harden already had a season averaging 29/7/6 with McHale before Dantoni came around, and was 2nd in MVP voting in 14-15.
I think there’s a world where he’s on a shitty Memphis team and shot chucking like in 18 and does something similar
Well also worth noting we drafted Mike Conley at #4 in 2007 and OJ Mayo the year before. So we had already invested heavily in the PG and SG position. Thabeet had the hype and intangibles to justify him being selected at #2, unfortunately for us he’s an airhead with no motivation to get better
Steph would have dodged our workouts if he could have too. He wanted to go to the Knicks, his dad told us not to draft him.
That’s why basketball specifically in the NBA is not all about skills or height or how good you are as a basketball player. The most important is the attitude and how can you adjust to be a team player.
Remember, all these players are once the MVP or best players in HS or College. But if you want to stay in the NBA for very long time, you need to find and know your role. The players who adapted and changed the way how they approached the game are the one who stayed long in the NBA.
Great example: Cam Thomas.
I once knew a NBA scout who had worked for the Knicks in the 70’s and 80’s. I had played college ball so we would always talk about the game and not only were his stories gold but his insight was amazing. I will never forget that he said when you get to the NBA it isn’t about what you can do it is about what you can’t do whether it be physical or emotional or mental.
That old Italian bastard with a terrible comb over was playing pick up games in his 50’s and his fat ass still had the NYC sauce to his game. He threw me an oop once that I about died going up to get and afterwards he said, “I just wanted to see if you could still get up there.”
The man had the best vinyl collection of Motown, Blues, Soul, R&B and so forth. RIP Howie. You were a character my friend.
Remember any stories that you can share?
One in particular is that he was no longer a full time scout by the late 80’s but still had his finger in the game.
He told a scout friend with…I believe the Nets…to draft Andrew Moten out of Florida. So the team drafted Moten in the the 4th round or 6th round or something like that. In training camp Moten proceeds (allegedly) to kill either the 1st round pick or the teams starting point guard…I don’t quite remember which. Moten ends up with an injury in training camp and (allegedly) due to team politics is cut because it was a bad look for a late round draft pick to be destroying “the man”.
That is the first story that comes to mind
Thats really cool man, i would’ve loved to have picked his brain
To be fair Brooklyn eventually let Cam Thomas be the guy for them but he put up empty stats and just wasn’t winning basketball
His biggest problem now is that any team he goes to going forward won’t let him be that
His biggest problem is being incapable of playing team basketball
watching him dribble the air out of the ball only to force some horrible shot up is hilarious
He’s a 2K player come to life
Zero concept of team play, pounds the ball the entire shot clock just to throw up some bullshit or hand his team mate a grenade
Exactly my point. Everyone in NBA, even the players at the end of the bench are all skilled and they are the 1%.
Because he proves that his scoring means nothing if half of the time he is lazy and doing nothing on the other end.
Tony Allen is hilarious lol, obligatory fuck Chandler Parsons though.
🎶 And Thabeet goes on… 🎶
Fuck Thabeet, I’m going A Capela
Fuck a pop, a doc, fuck everybody
We got Thabeet! We got Thabeet, we got Thatbeet! YEAH! We got Thabeet!
Went to the summer rookie league in Vegas back in 2009. I had the pleasure of watching Blake Griffin just eat up other rookies. He was head and shoulders better than everybody else on the court - physically, too. Also saw Thabeet, and he was just hot garbage. Watching him just suck azz, you could tell he wasn’t going to make it in the NBA.
Every time I see Hasheem Thabeet mentioned I’m reminded of the video from a training camp where he couldn’t even complete a basic dribble drill.
DeJuan Blair making Thabeet his bitch in college should have been a clue
One of the biggest busts ppl dont really talk about
He was on that Babe Ruth high performance diet
i could listen to tony allen talk about anything for hours honestly
Picking top 3 is fucking terrifying. It’s not uncommon at all for a top pick to just be complete fucking ass.
I’m hopeful this year that the top 4 are all really fucking good, though.
It’s funny cause I think his NBA calling was an end of the bench vibes guy Lol. I remember he was a great teammate in OKC, and guys like KD and Russ loved him there
Not saying he would’ve been an all star or even a solid starter, but I think with better work ethic he could’ve carved a role as a backup big playing 15-20 minutes a game.
Hasheem Thabeet to the tune of We Got the Beat by The Go-Gos
tbh, he still made 16 million, still playing pro today, probably living the life he wants not listening to nobody. so who really lost here lol?
2k beast
As a UConn fan I was wildly disappointed by how he turned out
Tony making the rounds eh. Gotta give him credit. Hes stretching being a stopper more than anyone ever has I think. Maybe outside of dumbass Beverly who just says whatever.
Tony has his own show, so his sound bites are not him making the rounds.
Also Tony is one of the best defenders of all time. Put some respect on his name
Tony Allen was one of the greatest defenders of all time and always ranks highly on those lists. Beverly was a decent high energy bench guy.
When Kobe says Tony Allen is the best defender he’s ever faced, it’s not a stretch.