WashPost on Ralph Sampson

I've heard NBA writers say that the worst thing that happened to Sampson was the Rockets getting Olajuwon since they moved him to power forward.

 

Sampson was a huge deal in the 1980s. His teams just never had that much tournament success, but in the regular season, they basically lived in the top three AP spots for four years.

 

Each of the past 30 No. 1 picks, ranked by the expectations they faced:

Tier 1: Expected to be an all-time great
1. LeBron James
2. Shaquille O'Neal
3. Patrick Ewing
4. Tim Duncan
5. Hakeem Olajuwon
6. Chris Webber
7. Greg Oden
8. David Robinson

Tier 2: Expected to be a Hall of Famer
9. Danny Manning
10. Dwight Howard
11. Anthony Davis
12. Ralph Sampson
13. Allen Iverson
14. Glenn Robinson
15. Derrick Rose

Tier 3: Expected to be a multi-time All-Star
16. Derrick Coleman
17. John Wall
18. Larry Johnson
19. Blake Griffin
20. Yao Ming
21. Kyrie Irving
22. Kwame Brown
23. Joe Smith

Tier 4: Expected to be a very good player
24. Elton Brand
25. Brad Daugherty
26. Pervis Ellison
27. Andrew Bogut

Tier 5: Fuck it, let's hope he's the best in this shit draft
28. Kenyon Martin
29. Michael Olowokandi
30. Andrea Bargnani

Of course, Olowokandi's draft wasn't actually shit at all, with Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison and others.

Based on expectations, Oden is by far the biggest underachiever. But if you remove injury cases from the list, Webber kind of underachieved as well.

 

Sampson should be between James and Ewing.

 

On that list, I would have had Sampson No. 6 or No. 7. I'd have him after Olajuwon and maybe after David Robinson, but ahead of Webber.

 

Shaq is far and away #1 on that list. LeBron was 18 at the time and that alone tempered the expectations. But Shaq was being compared to the greatest centers ever from the time he was at LSU and especially as soon as he entered the league.

 

I'm biased on both guys -- I've spent a lot of time in Charlottesville, Va., hearing about the legend of Ralph and my brother and Danny Manning were both born on May 17, which is known as Danny Manning Day at my parents' house -- but I think Manning and Sampson would go on the first tier.

Sampson was as legendary an ACC player as Jordan, Bias, Thompson or any of the other greats that came out of that 70s-80s era and thoroughly outplayed Ewing in college. Manning was an absolute no-brainer No. 1 pick. He had Dirk's skill set, probably not quite as good a shooter, but was more athletic.

 

I probably would have put Ewing No. 1. It's really hard to argue with any of the top five. Sampson is in the conversation though.

 

Eh, you might be right on Ewing. So make it Shaq and Ewing far and away #s 1 and 2. I still say there was more anticipation for Shaq, though -- and granted, much of it pushed by Reebok.

They were well ahead of LeBron on the expect-o-meter, though. I don't recall LeBron being the unanimous slam-dunk, if only because you still had people who were dumb enough to think he was going to be a lesser player by missing out on a year or two of college "seasoning" about playing THE RIGHT WAY.

 

That made LeBron one of more than 50 high school athletes declared The Chosen One by SI at one time or another.

http://deadspin.com/5277668/sports-illustrateds-many-many-chosen-ones

Again, it might have seemed silly at the time and certainly seems sillier in retrospect, but people were hung up on whether he had the fundamental training to be that superstar. Remember he was coming soon after the high school draft disaster of 2001. Plus which, nobody REALLY knew what he could do. Not that many people outside of the scouting world had actually laid eyes on him. Shaq and Ewing were 3-4 years into their national TV careers.

 

"Not that many people outside of the scouting world had actually laid eyes on him" - that is completely false. A bunch of his high school games were on TV. I'd guess that I watched at least 4-5 of his games during his senior, as they were on ESPN.

 

I remember Ewing being touted as the best player to come out of the draft since Abdul-Jabbar.

I don't think anyone questioned that LeBron would be great, but I think they might have thought that it might take him a year or two to get great, since he was coming straight out of high school.

Olajuwon was good enough to be taken ahead of Jordan. Then again, so was Sam Bowie.

Duncan, Robinson and Sampson aren't too far behind.

I'd go Ewing No. 1, Olajuwon and Shaq at No. 2 and No. 3, then probably Duncan, James, Sampson and Robinson.