Orlando Magic and Chicago Bulls - Top Team Drafts in the last Decade: NBA Featured Report (Part-2)
And then there was Jameer Nelson, a guy who many thought should have in the top 10, but eventually got picked up the Denver Nuggets as the 20th overall. Desperate to acquire a decent point guard, the Magic traded for
Nelson and played him mostly as a role player in the first season, by the end of which, Nelson started to prove his credentials. He finished his rookie season with an average of 8.7 points per game, but playing mostly as a starter in the next season, his figure
shot to 14.9 points and 4.9 assists per game.
The duo of Howard and Nelson were pivotal in making the Magic a genuine championship contender in the years that followed. Magic reached the NBA Finals in 2008, but went down fighting against the mighty Los Angeles Lakers.
Chicago Bulls – Ben Gordon and Luol Deng
In the same year, when the Orlando Magic brought in the likes of Dwight Howard and Jameer Nelson, the Chicago Bulls roped in Ben Gordon with the number three draft pick. Luol Deng, a British national of Sudanese origin was also
picked up by the Phoenix Suns as the seventh overall.
Ben Gordon was an instant hit in the windy city. As a rookie, Gordon averaged 15.1 points, 2.6 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game on an average playing time of 24.2 minutes per game. In a total of 21 games in that season, Gordon
scored in double figures and won the Rookie of the Month award three times. Although, he could not beat Dwight Howard in the race to the Rookie of the Year award, he did become the first rookie ever to nab the ‘Sixth Man of the Year’ award.
Chicago, who were only a shadow of their past glories after Michael Jordan left them in 1998, marked their first playoff appearance that very year. Gordon would go on to be Chicago’s leading scorer in the next four seasons.
Like Gordon, Chicago also hit a jackpot with Deng. He played in 61 games during the first season and averaged 11.7 points per game. Since then, Deng became a regular in the Bulls starting lineup. Although his wrist injury caused
him major concerns in his career, he really announced himself in the last season, when in combination with Derrick Rose, he guided the Bulls to the best regular season record in the NBA and the Eastern Conference Finals.
In the first game that the Bulls won in the Conference Finals it was Deng, who hounded Miami Heat’s LeBron James and showed that he belonged to the league of the very best forwards. He went on to be a reliable scoring option in
the rest of the series, but the Bulls just didn’t have the resources to contain the star cast of Heat.
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