With the 2025 NBA Draft inching closer, let’s look back at the last decade of picks at No. 3 overall.
Who’s ready for another trip down memory lane?!
The Sixers have quite an important decision quickly coming up as they hold on to the No. 3 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. So now’s a good a time as any to take a look at the last decade of third overall picks and see how they’ve turned out.
For fun, I’ll be adding who I thought should have been the correct pick with the benefit of hindsight if I think the team got it wrong. To that point, keep in mind the dust may still be setting on some of these more recent selections.
Jahlil Okafor
Well, not many here are going to need a reminder of how this turned out. It’s been a decade since the Sixers have picked at three and they hope this time around goes a bit better. Not only was selecting Okafor redundant with two of the team’s most recent lottery picks in Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel, but it became obvious pretty quickly that Okafor’s game had been aged out of the NBA.
Supbar rebounding and defense made it tricky for him to be a successful big man in the league. While he was a talented scorer, his lack of range outside 15 feet made it so his offense wasn’t potent enough to keep him on the floor.
After two disappointing seasons in Philadelphia, Okafor was traded to Brooklyn early in the 2017-18 season. He went on to have a short stint with the New Orleans Pelicans before his career looked like it was petering out. Credit to him though for sticking around. After a few years persisting in the G-League, he got a 10-day from the Indiana Pacers and appeared in one game this season. So while this pick looks like a bust, Vegan Jah could still come away with a ring this year!
Correct pick: Devin Booker
Jaylen Brown
After four All-Star appearances, one All-NBA selection, a conference finals MVP and a Finals MVP, it’s easy to remember that the Celtics were ruthlessly made fun of for this pick in the moment. Common consensus had Providence guard Kris Dunn as the third best player in this draft behind Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram. Many at the time wanted Boston to package the pick to acquire Jimmy Butler from the Chicago Bulls.
Instead, the Celtics took a flyer on a very athletic wing with a very raw game. Product of his situation or not, Brown would develop into a 19 points and 5 rebounds per game player on top of being a staunch defender. The incredible thing is that he had the time to round into more of a complete player despite being a rotation regular on a team that went to the conference finals in his rookie season.
Correct pick: Jaylen Brown
Jayson Tatum
Markelle Fultz, whatever happened there.
Correct pick: sigh…
Luka Doncic
Is there a better example of people overthinking the draft cycle than this year? The 2018 draft was bookmarked for Doncic’s arrival for years. Winning the MVP of the EuroLeague at 18 years old will do that. Still, in the months leading up to the draft the league talked itself into De’Andre Ayton and Marvin Bagley III being better prospects.
The Dallas Mavericks took full advantage of this slide, trading from their fifth pick to three from the Atlanta Hawks to select Doncic. The Hawks ended up taking Trae Young after moving back, and it’s a credit to how good Young has been that people ever called this a win-win trade at any point in time.
Doncic was the superstar the Mavericks hoped he’d be, pretty much since his first night in the league. He averaged 21 points, 7.8 assists and 6 rebounds to cruise to a Rookie-of-the-Year solution. In the time since he’s taken Dallas on multiple playoff runs, including one to the conference finals and another to the NBA Finals all before 26. The Mavericks seizing this opportunity set them up for a decade of success. Hold on, what’s that? I’m getting a phone call.
Correct pick: How the hell did Luka not go one?
RJ Barrett
Barrett came into his freshman year at Duke as the No. 1 draft prospect in his class, but he was quickly eclipsed by teammate Zion Williamson as the season got underway. So far in his career Barrett’s shown an ability to score the ball, but he was not the savior of the franchise the New York Knicks were looking for at the time.
He’s averaged 18.8 points per game for his career on an effective field goal percentage of 49.4%. He hasn’t been efficient enough to have so many on-ball touches, and hasn’t really found comfort as an off-ball scorer, which was one of the biggest concerns surrounding him coming into the league.
In my opinion, this pick is still a success purely based off of what the Knicks were able to turn him into. They packaged him and Immanuel Quickley to the Raptors in exchange for OG Anunoby in late 2023. Anunoby has become one of their best players on their most successful team in the last 25 years. Your mileage on that may vary though, since Barrett himself didn’t turn out for the Knicks how they’d hoped.
Correct pick: RJ Barrett
LaMelo Ball
There aren’t many franchises that could hit on such a talent and still be right where they were beforehand, but the Hornets are certainly one of them. Not only did Ball win Rookie of the Year in his first year for Charlotte, but the next season he went on to become the youngest ever All-Star, averaging 20.1 points and 7.6 assists per game. He was even able to get the Hornets to qualify for a spot in the Play-In tournament that season.
Health has thrown a pretty big wrench into his career since. He’s only played in 105 out of 246 possible games in the following three seasons. His scoring production has increased, but his efficiency hasn’t. His 40.6% field goal percentage and 49.4% effective field goal percentage were career lows as Charlotte continues to be one of the worst teams in the league.
Correct pick: Tyrese Haliburton
Evan Mobley
Yet another third overall pick that’s already racked up a lot of accolades in his young career. The Cleveland Cavaliers used this selection in 2021 to grab a core piece of a team that just earned the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Mobley’s impact, especially defensively, was felt right away. Cleveland doubled their win total in his rookie season.
The last two years have seen some development that show why Mobley is an All-NBA talent with an even higher ceiling. He went from a 21% three-point shooter to making 37.3% of them in 2024. He was able to sustain that percentage going from 1.2 attempts to 3.2 attempts per game in 2025.
He’s had his struggles, like many of his teammates as the Cavs have disappointed in the playoffs the past couple of seasons though. His continued improvement each year is a reason to feel good about his continued development going forward. Not only was he named to his first All-NBA team in 2025, but he also took home the Defensive Player of the Year award.
Correct pick: Evan Mobley
Jabari Smith Jr.
Now we are entering the territory where the jury is still very much out on a lot of these decisions. Despite some rumors leading up to the draft that Smith could go first overall, he ended up sliding behind Paolo Banchero and Chet Holmgren.
In doing so, he landed on a Houston Rockets team quite crowded with long wings that has only gotten more crowded since then. Smith has put up perfectly decent production so far. In about 30 minutes a game he averages 13 points and 7.5 assists for his career, shooting 43% from the field.
It’s quite possible Smith is one of the odd men out in Houston. He hasn’t popped as much as wings such as Amen Thompson or Tari Eason as the team may attempt to balance out their roster. Looking back at this draft though, the only obvious selection the Rockets would be better off with is Jalen Williams (J-Dub), who went 12th.
Correct pick: Jalen Williams
Scoot Henderson
I was among the many who made fun of the Charlotte Hornets for taking Brandon Miller over Henderson, and I am among the many who’s had to eat crow on that since. Henderson’s career for the Portland Trail Blazers started about as poorly as possible. He averaged 14 points per game as a rookie shooting 38.5% from the field and 32.5% from behind the three-point arc.
It’s never a good sign when a guard as small as Henderson doesn’t look like his athleticism will translate as well to the NBA-level as expected. He showed some life down the stretch of his second season though and a big part of that was just being able to hit shots. In his last 35 games he shot 43.4% from the field and 38.4% of his threes, taking 5.2 of them per game. It’s hard to kill the Blazers for this pick because everyone was high on Henderson back then and hey, there’s still time.
Correct pick: Amen Thompson
Reed Sheppard
It’s not just being the most recent pick that makes this an incomplete grade. The Rockets were more ready for contention after this selection, and as a result Sheppard only appeared in just 52 games averaging 12.6 minutes a night. On top of that he suffered a fractured thumb that caused him to miss much of March and April.
Due to those factors, he didn’t produce much as an NBA rookie, but the Rockets have yet to waiver in their belief in him as an offensive talent. They hope what he showed in the G-League is an indication of that. He averaged 30.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 8.3 assists while shooting 45.6 percent from the field and 40.5 percent from three for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.
If you had to strap the Rockets to a lie detector test, perhaps they’d rather have taken the guard with a similar profile who adapted to the NBA level much quicker, but there’s still plenty of time for Sheppard to be the bucket-getter the Rockets need.
Correct pick: Jared McCain