Every NBA #1 overall draft pick (1947 to 2025)

Published April 19, 2026 · By The Basketball Fans Editors

The NBA Draft has run, in one format or another, since 1947. The first overall pick in each year has, 79 times, been the single most-anticipated basketball transaction of the summer. Of the 79 first overall picks through 2025, 24 have been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Three additional recent picks (Anthony Davis, Karl-Anthony Towns, Zion Williamson) are on trajectories that will likely produce Hall of Fame inductions. Two first overall picks (Magic Johnson in 1979 and David Robinson in 1987) have won NBA MVP in the same calendar year they were drafted. Three first overall picks (Lew Alcindor/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1969, Shaquille O’Neal in 1992, LeBron James in 2003) have defined three different eras of American basketball. And one first overall pick (Anthony Bennett, 2013) has been cited in every subsequent draft-retrospective as the single most identifiable “bust” selection of the lottery era.

The full list follows, in order. Key career-context entries are annotated.

The full list, 1947–2025

The Hall of Fame first overall picks

Of the 79 first overall picks through 2025, 21 have been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame: Elgin Baylor (1958), Oscar Robertson (1960), Walt Bellamy (1961), Elvin Hayes (1968), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1969), Bob Lanier (1970), Austin Carr (1971), Bill Walton (1974), David Thompson (1975), Magic Johnson (1979), James Worthy (1982), Ralph Sampson (1983), Hakeem Olajuwon (1984), Patrick Ewing (1985), David Robinson (1987), Shaquille O’Neal (1992), Chris Webber (1993), Allen Iverson (1996), Tim Duncan (1997), Yao Ming (2002), and Dwight Howard (2004). The list will almost certainly grow with LeBron James (2003) and Anthony Davis (2012) inducted in their first-eligible years.

Teams with the most #1 overall picks

The Cleveland Cavaliers are the franchise that has held the first overall pick the most times in the lottery era (five picks, including the infamous 2013 Anthony Bennett selection).

The famous 1984 draft

The 1984 NBA Draft is, by consensus, the best draft in NBA history. The first four picks:

1. Hakeem Olajuwon, Houston Rockets (see [our Hakeem Olajuwon biography](/players/hakeem-olajuwon/))
2. Sam Bowie, Portland Trail Blazers
3. Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls (see [our Michael Jordan biography](/players/michael-jordan/))
4. Sam Perkins, Dallas Mavericks

Sam Bowie was drafted ahead of Michael Jordan by the Trail Blazers’ general manager Stu Inman on the basis of team need (Portland already had two first-round shooting guards on the roster, including Clyde Drexler). Inman later publicly said the decision was the most defensible of his career at the time and has been rehashed unfairly ever since. The Jordan-to-Chicago pick, at third, is one of the most famous draft-night transactions in American sports history. Olajuwon at one is, in retrospect, a defensible selection; he became a two-time Finals MVP and is on the all-time top-ten list. But the 1984 draft will be known forever for what Bowie wasn’t.

Lottery era busts

A handful of first overall picks have not worked out. The most-cited lottery-era misses:

• Anthony Bennett, 2013, Cleveland. The single most-identified bust of the lottery era. Bennett averaged 4.4 points on .356 shooting in four NBA seasons. He was out of the league by 2017. Cleveland’s 2013 draft-board evaluation process has been the subject of multiple front-office retrospective pieces. Panini’s annual NBA card packs are the best way to collect these eras without paying vintage prices.
• Kwame Brown, 2001, Washington. The first player drafted first overall straight out of high school. The Wizards, under Michael Jordan’s basketball operations, selected him from Glynn Academy in Georgia. Brown played 12 NBA seasons and averaged 6.6 points per game.
• Markelle Fultz, 2017, Philadelphia. Fultz’s senior-year shooting mechanics collapsed within weeks of arriving in Philadelphia, in what has been diagnosed variously as a thoracic outlet syndrome, a yips-style form breakdown, and an unusual shoulder injury. He has remained an NBA player but has never regained his college-level shooting stroke.
• Michael Olowokandi, 1998, Clippers. Beaten out, in the draft process, over Dirk Nowitzki (9th) and Paul Pierce (10th).
• Greg Oden, 2007, Portland. Picked ahead of Kevin Durant. Oden’s career was ended by microfracture-surgery knee complications before he played a meaningful minute of NBA basketball. He is frequently included in lists of careers-ended-by-injury, with the counter-argument being he was correctly drafted at 19 based on the health information available to Portland at the time.

The draft lottery and its consequences

Since 1985, the NBA Draft Lottery has determined the first overall pick. The lottery has been a gambling mechanism rather than a predetermination; every lottery-eligible team has some chance of the first pick. The lottery-era first picks (Patrick Ewing 1985 through Cooper Flagg 2025) have, on aggregate, produced 18 Hall of Famers across 41 drafts, a roughly 44% Hall rate. The pre-lottery picks (1947-1984) produced 12 Hall of Famers across 38 drafts, a roughly 32% rate. The lottery has, by that measurement, been the more productive format.

Gear

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Sources

Basketball-Reference is the primary source. Team-by-team draft histories are from each franchise’s official records and the NBA’s official draft archive. The 1984 Sam Bowie decision context is from Stu Inman’s 2009 interview with Sports Illustrated. The 1985 Lottery controversy (the “frozen envelope” theory) is covered on our Patrick Ewing biography. Bust-era retrospective coverage is from Kevin Pelton’s June 2024 ESPN ranking of every #1 pick in history.