2024 Basketball Eligibles
Professionally, Corey Brewer was a journeyman player who served 13 seasons in the NBA, highlighted by winning an NBA Championship with Dallas in 2011. He was never close to being an All-Star, but the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame cares about collegiate accomplishments, and Brewer helped lead Florida to win two NCAA Titles while winning a Final Four MVP. Many Hall of Fame players has three fewer Championships than Brewer.
A late First Round Pick from Missouri (27th in 2010), DeMarre Carroll was a journeyman player who had stints for Memphis, Houston, Denver, Utah, Atlanta, Toronto, Brooklyn, and San Antonio, but for a hot second, while he was with the Hawks, it looked like Carroll was about to break out. Named the Co-Player of the Month in January of 2005, Carroll finished the year fourth in Effective Field Goal Percentage. Carroll never broke that threshold, but he…
After a year at Michigan, Jamal Crawford declared for the NBA Draft where the Chicago Bulls took him ninth overall. Crawford would not blossom into a superstar, but he is one of the rare men to have competed in 20 NBA seasons, an astounding achievement for any athlete. The sharpshooter began a 16-year streak of at least 10 Points per Game in 2002-03, with half of them exceeding 17, peaking with a 20.6 PPG when he…
J.R. Smith will best be known as an eccentric individual whose penchant for bad on-court decision-making cost his team a Finals Game, but he was still a coveted role player for years who won two NBA Championships; Cleveland in 2016 and Los Angeles in 2020. Smith’s individual highlights include finishing in the top ten four times in 3-Point Field Goals, winning the 2013 Sixth Man of the Year, and earning three consecutive Rookie of the…
Kyle Korver was a two-time Mountain Valley Conference Player of the Year at Creighton, but it was not expected that he would have a long career as a professional, and thus, he slid down late in the Second Round. Initially drafted by the Nets but traded to Sixers afterward, Korver established his worth as a long-range sharpshooter, leading the NBA in that stat four times, becoming the first player to do so. Also, a two-time leader…
Ryan Anderson was a late First Round Pick (21st Overall) from California in 2008 by the New Jersey Nets, and after playing there only one year, he was traded to Orlando, where in 2011/12, he was named the Most Improved Player in the NBA. Anderson, who led the league in 3-Point Field Goals that year, never built on that season, and he arguably never had a better season. Anderson continued his career with New Orleans, Houston, Phoenix,…