The 2026 NBA Draft handed another wave of teenagers the superstar label, and most of them will spend years trying to live up to it.
Washington took AJ Dybantsa first, the headline pick in a class so deep that four prospects — Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer and Caleb Wilson — were all treated as worthy of the top spot.
It was billed as one of the most stacked draft pools in years. History says not all of it will land.
These are five prospects I was certain would be stars and weren’t. It’s not necessarily the five most famous. Some of the most infamous busts are missing. A few, though, were impossible to leave off.
The old-school busts
Darko Milicic — 2003, No. 2 (Detroit Pistons)
Detroit picked the Serbian teenager second in 2003, ahead of Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade — three Hall of Fame-level careers. Milicic barely played on a stacked Pistons team that won the title the next summer, and he never found his footing afterward.
He drifted through six franchises and later admitted his heart was never fully in the game. He now farms apples in Serbia.
Anthony Bennett — 2013, No. 1 (Cleveland Cavaliers)
Cleveland stunned the room by taking the UNLV forward first in 2013, and it unraveled almost immediately.
Bennett looked overmatched from his opening minutes, cycling through four teams in four seasons before washing out of the league entirely. He averaged just over four points a game and was gone from the NBA by his mid-20s, chasing work overseas instead. No No. 1 pick has fallen faster or further.
The modern misses
Markelle Fultz — 2017, No. 1 (Philadelphia 76ers)
Philadelphia traded up to grab the Washington guard first in 2017, convinced they’d found their backcourt star of the next decade. Then his jump shot disappeared.
A shoulder problem later diagnosed as thoracic outlet syndrome stripped away the smooth stroke that made him the top pick, and the mechanics never fully came back. Fultz rebuilt himself into a useful rotation guard in Orlando, but nothing close to what was expected of him.
He’s now in the G League with the Raptors 905.
James Wiseman — 2020, No. 2 (Golden State Warriors)
Golden State took the Memphis center second in 2020, betting he’d grow into a franchise big alongside their veteran core. Injuries had other plans.
Wiseman played just three college games and never got a clean stretch in the NBA either, with knee and Achilles setbacks stalling him at every turn.
The Warriors moved on quickly, and he’s since bounced through Detroit, Toronto and Indiana as a deep-bench piece. The production I expected from such a unique talent never arrived.
Ben Simmons — 2016, No. 1 (Philadelphia 76ers)
Now this one is personal. Before his disappearance, Ben Simmons was my favorite player.
He went first in 2016 and, for a stretch, looked generational — Rookie of the Year, three All-Star nods, two All-Defensive First Team selections, and the kind of two-way playmaking that drew LeBron James comparisons.
For a player handed a ceiling that high, the collapse was brutal — a refusal to shoot, the passed-up dunk in Philadelphia’s 2021 Game 7 exit, a bitter split, then back trouble that hollowed out his Brooklyn and Clippers years.
He last played in May 2025 and now runs a professional fishing team. Exceptional for a while — but measured against what he was supposed to be, maybe the biggest bust of them all.
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