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Not every player who sticks in the NBA after their first training camp is on a path towards stardom. There are players that hang on for just a cup of coffee and others who manage to endure their own poor play along the way to a slow, but reassuringly lengthy career of mediocrity (we're looking at you, Brian Scalabrine).
In some cases, these players have been acquired through a high draft pick or signed to a lucrative contract, making their continued survival a product of the big investment placed on them (though not everyone is as lucky as Kwame Brown). In other cases, they are very good at being large humans, which is a skill that can't be taught (Kwame was good at that, we have to admit).
Any basketball player who manages to make it through to the world's top basketball league merits a pretty significant level of respect, but just as there are all-time great NBA players, there are all-time bad ones. Rather than focusing on the short lifespan players, this list zeroes in on those who managed to continually detriment their own team while somehow finding continued employment (Michael Olowakandi averaged a double-double once, or nearly did, and therefore he isn't part of this list).
Read on, without further ado, to find a definitive list of the 10 worst players, possibly ever, to play in the NBA.
#10 Mark Madsen
We have to give credit where credit is due: Mark "Mad Dog" Madsen translated whatever little natural basketball ability he had into a productive nine-year career that even included titles with the Los Angeles Lakers in his first two seasons.
But Madsen never averaged as many as four points or rebounds, despite playing over 450 games and even starting 70, not to mention appearing in 49 playoff games.
Madsen is probably best-remembered for some cringe-worthy moments in the Lakers' victory parades during the Shaq and Kobe times, chiefly in the 2001 rally when he danced along to Shaquille O'Neal's rap on stage.
#9 Anthony Bennett
The only #1 overall pick to be featured on this list, Anthony Bennett is the classic case of the college basketball player who dominates amateur competition on account of his superior physicality, but fails to do so when surrounded by players at his own level of physicality and with better skills.
Selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers with the #1 overall pick, Bennett dropped out of their regular rotation before long, before heading to the Minnesota Timberwolves as part of the Kevin Love trade package. Unable to crack the rotation there either, Bennett has since then been in and out of the league, playing Canadian pro basketball.
#8 Brian Cardinal
A proverbial coach's son, gym rat, lunch-pail kinda guy as most NBA and AAU coaches would describe him, Brian Cardinal built a lengthy and rather successful player by being the only thing he was capable of being on an NBA court studded with 9 players almost always more skilled and able than him - a lunch pail kinda guy.
Cardinal's nickname of "The Custodian" pointed to his decidedly non-glamorous, gritty stamp on the NBA. Cardinal couldn't reach double digit scoring averages in any of his 12 NBA seasons, with his highest scoring average being 9.6 points in 2003-04 with the Golden State Warriors. Beyond his pail-and-bucket style, he is probably best known for scoring an eye-popping six-year, $34.5 million contract from the Memphis Grizzlies, where he promptly saw his minutes and production cut in half.
#7 Rafael Araujo
Taken one pick before 2015 NBA Finals MVP and Olympic gold medal winner Andre Iguodala, few names inspire the level of vitriol and disgust among Raptor fans as Rafael Araujo has over the years.
Marketed as a strong interior force when he was drafted by much-reviled GM Rob Babcock eighth overall in 2004, Araujo immediately looked out of place in the NBA as someone who was neither quick nor strong nor athletic enough to compete at basketball's highest level.
The Brazilian played a total of 139 regular season games in the league, traded to the Utah Jazz following 2 seasons of disappointment in Toronto during their post-Vince Carter times. The 6'11" center was never able to truly find his place in the NBA, particularly during those dreary, low-scoring mid-noughties.
#6 Pete Chilcutt
Over a standout college career at UNC under Dean Smith, Pete Chilcutt forged his reputation on a clutch shooting stroke. That shot, however, only took him so far during a nine-year NBA career, where Chilcutt's lack of athleticism became a rather pesky problem. He averaged a maximum of 21 minutes per game with the Sacramento Kings in their 1993-94 campaign.
He bounced around seven NBA teams and even won a title with the 1995 Houston Rockets, but the lanky power forward never averaged more than 6.1 points. His shooting stroke was his only skill that he was able to translate to the pro game, as he finished his career with a 38.1% field goal percentage from 3-point territory.
#5 Kyle Singler
Singler was a four-year starter for the Duke men's basketball team and was instrumental in their 2010 NCAA championship run, earning Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. His pace of play, however, was clearly not going to translate to the NBA, and therefore despite all of his accolades in college, he was only taken with the 33rd pick in the 2011 NBA draft by the Pistons and promptly stashed in the Spanish ACB.
Singler even started 150 games over the course of his Pistons career lasting 3 seasons from 2012-2015, before the Oklahoma City Thunder found it fit to somehow sign him on to a 4-year deal despite the swingman's highest scoring average being 9.6 ppg and him being a foot slower on defense than the rest of the league.
After falling completely out of even their garbage-time lineups, Singler was waived earlier this season by the franchise, but not before he replaced Brian Scalabrine on all the White Mamba memes.
#4 Nikoloz Tskitishvili
Dario Milicic might be a more famous bust considering the company of Hall of Famers he keeps among the top 5 picks within the 2003 NBA draft, but the trend of highly-coveted European big men failing to translate their game into the NBA was actually really started when the Denver Nuggets spent their #5 overall pick on the Georgian big man.
The Nuggets' front office had really never seen him play, which makes even lesser sense as the 7-footer only averaged 6.6 points and 1.8 rebounds per game through 11 games with Benetton Troviso. Skitishvili played for 4 NBA teams in 4 seasons before going back to European basketball. Bill Simmons claimed that Tskitishvili is "the worst-case scenario for any foreign pick" in the NBA, and I tend to agree with that notion.
#3 Michael Ruffin
The undersized power forward/center did not have the skillset to play as a swingman in the league, and did not have the size to play heavy minutes in the roles he was best at. Therefore, Michael Ruffin has gone on to become a poster boy of sorts for the unsuccessful journeyman who hung around playoff first round fodder teams for 10 seasons.
Drafted by the Bulls with the 32nd overall pick in the 1999 NBA draft, Ruffin's career highs in points per game and rebounds per game are 2.6 ppg and 5.8 rpg, which he achieved in his second season. Ruffin has the dubious distinction of being one of the few players to have tallied more fouls than points in the NBA, getting called for 946 fouls and putting up only 716 points through 10 years in the league.
#2 Sun Yue
In pursuit of the next Lamar Odom, this time of Asian origin, the Lakers thought it worth their while to expend a second-round pick on Chinese import Sun Yue. Yue had earlier played for the Beijing Olympians in the Chinese Basketball Association from the tender, young age of 17, and it was expected that his experience of pro basketball would come in handy as he adjusted to the pace and space in the NBA.
After looking somewhat competent in a short D-League stint, the Lakers offered Yue a platform to see what he could do for the purple and gold at the NBA level. It didn't go well. Following a debut in which he collected four fouls and two turnovers in five minutes, Yue would go on to accumulate more fouls (10) than points (six) and as many turnovers (three) as assists and steals combined. Ten games was all it took for the Lakers to realize that Yue simply wasn't an NBA player.
#1 JaVaris Crittenton
"Pick one" was allegedly the threat made to Javaris Crittenton by teammate Gilbert Arenas in the locker room of the Washington Wizards. The presence of guns in the locker room breached just about every player code the league had to offer and brought a swift end to Crittenton's nondescript NBA career, in which the 2007 first rounder made it to three different teams in two seasons before the Washington incident.
During that time, he never cracked six points a game or 2.5 assists. He has since pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 23 years in prison. It was a brave but correct decision by Ernie Grunfeld, for once, to separate the youngsters like John Wall on the team from the influence of these rather touched-in-the-head players.
Where is JaVaris Crittenton in 2023?
JaVaris Crittenton after pleading guilty to the Manslaughter charges was sentenced to 23 years in prison, which was then reduced to 10 years under the conditions that he maintained good behavior and showed signs of turning a new leaf. JaVaris was released from the Wilcox State Prison in April of 2023.
