Worst Players in NBA History

There are many loved debates in basketball. Who is the true greatest of all-time player? Which championship-winning team was strongest? What is the best decade of basketball in NBA history?

All these are great questions that are routinely dissected by fans and pundits in exhaustive detail. After all, it’s fun to talk about who’s the best. Yet one question that rarely comes up is, well, who was the worst player of all time? 

Maybe it’s because the skill, athletic ability, and dedication to making it to the NBA means that there aren’t that many truly bad players. But don’t worry we’ve delved through the history books and managed to find some players that weren’t just bad, they were the worst.

Cherokee Parks 

This player was gifted with a great name and an impressive 6’11’’ frame, but not a lot else. Parks’ basketball career in college was a successful one, as he put up respectable numbers for the Duke Blue Devils and this got him drafted by the Dallas Mavericks in 1995. 

Parks just wasn’t able to make the step-up to the big league though and soon found himself shipped out around the league where he managed to play for an incredible seven teams in nine seasons. This was in spite of the fact that he managed to only put up a pitiful 6.3 points per game. Must have had one hell of an agent. 

Sun Yue

Ah Sun Yue, it all started so brightly for this true NBA flop. After a few successful years in the Chinese basketball league, Sun entered the 2007 draft where the Lakers decided to take a gamble on this 6’9’’ shooting guard. Sun then stayed on for another year at his Beijing team and continued to impress. 

However, when Sun finally made it to the U.S., within a few days of his arrival he contracted glandular fever and needed hospitalization. When he recovered and was finally able to play for the gold and yellow against the Milwaukee Bucks, things went from bad to worse.  Sun managed to accumulate four fouls and two turnovers in just five minutes of playing time. Yikes. 

It’s clear that if Yue found himself lacing up for your team today, you’d be tempted to bet on the opposition. Don’t worry though, Yue was put out of his misery after only ten games for the Lakers. If you still fancy having a bet on all kinds of sports including basketball, then check out draftkings promo code for all kinds of offers.

Manute Bol

When Manute Bol was drafted by the then Washington Bullets in 1985, most people tuned in just to confirm that what they’d heard was true, that a human standing at an incredible 7’7’’ existed and was playing basketball. And when they did tune in, they would indeed have seen the towering centre from Sudan laced up in the Bullets uniform, but whether or not he was truly playing basketball is much more debatable. 

Bol did predictably have good numbers in blocking, averaging five a game in his rookie year. That was about it though, as he managed to make everything else he had to do on the court look almost impossible. If Bol was not that popular a player on the court, he was incredibly popular off of it, becoming a great humanitarian and being an all-around great guy.