NBA First Overall Draft Pick on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
The National Basketball Association's first overall pick is the player who is selected first among all eligible draftees by a team during the annual National Basketball Association (NBA) draft. The first pick is awarded to the team that wins the NBA draft lottery; in most cases, that team had a losing record in the previous season. The team with the first pick attracts significant media attention, as does the player who is selected with that pick.
Eleven first picks have won the NBA Most Valuable Player Award: Oscar Robertson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (record six-time winner), Bill Walton,
The National Basketball Association's first overall pick is the player who is selected first among all eligible draftees by a team during the annual National Basketball Association (NBA) draft. The first pick is awarded to the team that wins the NBA draft lottery; in most cases, that team had a losing record in the previous season. The team with the first pick attracts significant media attention, as does the player who is selected with that pick.
Eleven first picks have won the NBA Most Valuable Player Award: Oscar Robertson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (record six-time winner), Bill Walton, Magic Johnson
Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. (born August 14, 1959) is an American former professional basketball player. He is often regarded as the greatest point guard of all-time and has been compared with Stephen Curry. Johnson played 13 seasons in the ...
(three-time winner), Hakeem Olajuwon
Hakeem Abdul Olajuwon (; ; born January 21, 1963), nicknamed "the Dream", is a Nigerian Americans, Nigerian-American former professional basketball player. From 1984 to 2002, he played Center (basketball), center in the National Basketball Ass ...
, David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal
Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal ( ; born March 6, 1972), known commonly as "Shaq" ( ), is an American former professional basketball player who is a sports analyst on the television program ''Inside the NBA''. O'Neal is regarded as one of the greates ...
, Allen Iverson
Allen Ezail Iverson (; born June 7, 1975) is an American former professional basketball player. Nicknamed "the Answer", he played 14 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) at both the shooting guard and point guard positions. Iver ...
, Tim Duncan (two-time winner), LeBron James (four-time winner), and Derrick Rose
Derrick Martell Rose (born October 4, 1988) is an American professional basketball player for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played one year of college basketball for the Memphis Tigers before being drafted ...
(youngest winner).
China's Yao Ming
Yao Ming (; born September 12, 1980) is a Chinese basketball executive and former professional player. He played for the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) and the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Associat ...
(2002) and Italy's Andrea Bargnani (2006) are the only two players without competitive experience in the United States to be drafted first overall. Eleven other international players with U.S. college experience have been drafted first overall— Mychal Thompson ( Bahamas) in 1978, Olajuwon ( Nigeria) in 1984, Patrick Ewing ( Jamaica) in 1985, Duncan (U.S. Virgin Islands
The United States Virgin Islands,. Also called the ''American Virgin Islands'' and the ''U.S. Virgin Islands''. officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and an unincorporated and organized territory ...
) in 1997, Michael Olowokandi (Nigeria) in 1998, Andrew Bogut (Australia) in 2005, Kyrie Irving (Australia) in 2011, Anthony Bennett (Canada) in 2013, Andrew Wiggins (Canada) in 2014, Ben Simmons
Benjamin David Simmons (born 20 July 1996) is an Australian professional basketball player for the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for one season with the LSU Tigers, after which he was ...
(Australia) in 2016, and Deandre Ayton (Bahamas) in 2018. Duncan is an American citizen, but is considered an "international" player by the NBA because he was not born in one of the fifty states
The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands. Both the states and the United S ...
or the District of Columbia
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle (Washington, D.C.), Logan Circle, Jefferson Memoria ...
. Ewing had dual Jamaican-American citizenship when he was drafted and Irving and Simmons had dual Australian-American citizenship when they were drafted.
Note that the drafts between 1947 and 1949 were held by the Basketball Association of America
The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. Following its third season, 1948–49, the BAA absorbed most of National Basketball League (NBL) and rebranded as the National Ba ...
(BAA). The Basketball Association of America became the National Basketball Association after absorbing teams from the National Basketball League in the fall of 1949. Official NBA publications include the BAA Drafts as part of the NBA's draft history.
Key
List of first overall picks
See also
* List of first overall NBA G League draft picks * List of first overall WNBA draft picks *List of first overall Major League Baseball draft picks
The first-year player draft, also known as the Rule 4 Draft, is the primary mechanism for assigning amateur baseball players from high schools, colleges, and other amateur baseball clubs to Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. Unlike most p ...
* List of first overall National Football League draft picks
* List of first overall NHL draft picks
Notes
References
;General * ;Specific {{featured list First overall draft pick National Basketball Association lists First-overall draft picks