Nuggets' 2002 NBA Draft Revisited

So, as I was looking up the Nuggets' draft history trying to figure out how Luis Flores ever became associated with our team, I noticed the 2002 draft. It's worth a look back.

Our first selection, at #5........Nikoloz Tskitishvili from the Republic of Georgia. Wow. I had completely forgotten we'd taken him that high. I started to wonder what we really missed out on, but then I realized that entire draft was basically a train wreck. Highlights included Yao at #1, Amare Stoudemire at #9, Caron Butler at #10, Tayshaun Prince at #23, Krstic at #24 and Carlos Boozer at #35. Other than that, it's real ugly.

The Warriors took Mike Dunleavy at #3. The Clippers took Chris Wilcox at #8 and Melvin Ely at #12. The Bucks took Marcus Haislip at #13 and 76ers took Jiri Welsch at #16. And then there were the tragic injury players; the Bulls took Jay Williams at #2 and the Cavs took Dajuan Wagner with the #6 pick.*

Yes, the Skeeter pick was terrible, but most of the other teams totally screwed up as well. And the draft was really, really weak. People always want to bring up Amare Stoudemire, but he was one of the very few players that year who made a serious impact.

But then, the Nuggets use the 25th pick in the first round on Frank Williams out of Illinois, and the 33rd pick in the 2nd round for Vincent Yarbrough from Tennessee.

The Nuggets created a package of those two picks, Antonio McDyess (with his K-Mart-like knee and contract) and a future second round pick (2004's ?) to send to the Knicks for Marcus Camby, Mark Jackson, and the draft rights to Nene.

That trade turned out pretty dang good for the Nuggets. That seems like some good thinking by the management at the time. Unless you remember that Camby was coming off a season in which he played 29 games and averaged 11 points, Mark Jackson was at least 58 years old, and no one had ever seen Nene play. That doesn't sound very good. Knicks fans, as to be expected, booed the sh*t out of the Nene pick. And at the time, the papers were talking about McDyess as a "steal" and "ready to return to All-Star form" because no one knew how bad the knee really was.

So despite our best efforts to screw up the draft and make a completely worthless, possibly terrible trade, 2002 worked out alright. I think. Right? Wait...

We drafted two guys who are out of the league (Williams and Yarbrough), and Tskitishvili who's averaging 2.1 points in his NBA career with our 2 first-rounders and second-round pick. But we ended up with Camby and Nene.

And Casey Jacobsen, who was the 22nd pick of that draft, will probably be on our roster this season after playing on our summer league team.

Not too bad I guess.

*Note: I was getting my info from USA Today's old draft preview. Their scouting report for Jay Williams? "Comparative upside: Stephon Marbury. Comparative downside: Chauncey Billups." Basically, no one has any idea what they are talking about. Only time will tell.