Continuing the whereabouts round-ups of all recent NBA drafts, this is the fifth installment of the series. The non-canonical first four: 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997. As always, this is really long. Feel free to skip bits. First round – 1st pick: Chris Webber (Golden State) Webber retired from basketball in March 2008 after an unsuccessful short stint with the Warriors. He now works as an analyst for NBA TV, along with the occasional TNT appearance. Webber’s restaurant outside the ARCO Arena in Sacramento abruptly closed last month, but he’s supposedly writing a book, and he’s also active in business, owning both Maktub LLC (which builds things) and Full Bloom Marketing (which markets things). He also released an album back in 1999. I would love to know what that’s like. Chris Webber fact; on draft night 1993, Webber’s rights were traded by the Magic (who picked first) to the Warriors, in exchange for the rights to Penny Hardaway (picked third), as well as first-round draft picks in 1996, 1998 and 2000. That is a hell of a lot to give up just to move up two places in the draft, and it could have been especially painful considering that the Warriors sucked between 1997 and 2002. However, it could have been worse than it was. I’ve tried to piece back together what became of those picks, and here’s what I’ve found: 1996: The Warriors traded Webber after only one season to the Bullets in exchange for Tom Gugliotta, as well as for three first-round picks in the same years as the initial deal (96, 98, 00). However, the 1996 pick that Golden State received from the Bullets was in fact their own – Orlando had traded it to Washington in the summer of 1994 in a salary dump of Scott […]
