It’s been revisited more often in recent years for obvious reasons how in 2009, the Minnesota Timberwolves not only passed up on Stephen Curry in the draft once, but twice, and on consecutive picks.
With the fifth pick, the Wolves took Ricky Rubio, who was highly sought after for his passing abilities. At the sixth spot, the Wolves, faced with picking either guard Jonny Flynn out of Syracuse, or Curry out of Davidson, took Flynn.
This left us with Curry being selected seventh by the Golden State Warriors, helping align the NBA in its current form, and making for this awesome shirt:
My boy @JohnSharkman with the shirt to end all shirts pic.twitter.com/5IUhgYXbCd
— Jim Souhan (@SouhanStrib) March 9, 2016
Jonny Flynn was quickly out of the NBA, Rubio has been a solid player for the Wolves with rumors this season about his possible departure, and that Curry guy won a title and an MVP. He’s also in the middle of an all-time season.
Teams miss on draft picks often, and you could make the same type of shirt in a different fashion such as the Blazers taking Greg Oden as opposed to Kevin Durant or the prime example as the Blazers drafted Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan. But at least that happened in different years and different people making those choices. The Wolves missed not only once, but twice on consecutive picks. It just seems to make it that much worse.
With their young group of extremely talented players in Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, and Zach LaVine, that might have been a failure they are just now willing to accept, assuming those guys turn out alright.
