The 6 Greatest "One Hit Wonders" in the NBA

there's been a countless amount of times where a random average player will have a great game and that's always great to see but less often than that there's times where average players have an entire great season and it's a lot less likely because more often than not a great season means they'll usually have a great rest of their career but that's not always the case because these six players had one single great season and then we're never able to continue that success so they eventually dropped back down to being average players and usually this is called a one-hit wonder so today we're looking at the six biggest one-hit wonder players currently in the NBA starting with number one with it being Michael carter-williams even though he's been next to unheard of since his rookie season most of us remember him coming out and winning the Rookie of the Year award against a rookie class that's turned out to have Yanis Rudy Gobert CJ McCollum and Victor Oladipo in it and it's not even like it was a bad decision that led to him winning the award because he finished with a hundred and four out of a hundred and twenty four first-place votes for averaging 17 six and six on the season which made in the third rookie since Oscar Robertson and Alvan Adams to lead all rookies in all three categories and the 2013 draft class was initially already thought of as being pretty weak back then but Carter Williams was still a surprise to everyone getting picked 11th overall no one really thought he was gonna be that good in the league let alone be the Rookie of the Year but thanks to the 76ers other best players being fattiest young and Evan Turner the roster was one of the worst Philly could have possibly had at the very beginning of the trust the process process so someone had to score for them their production on the court had to come from somewhere and it just happened to be from MCW and his first NBA game ever was probably his best where he put up 22 points 12 assists and 9 steals against LeBron James and the defending champions in the Miami Heat then from there he consistently looked like a great player all year long but in year two he sat out the first few weeks of the seasons with an injury before coming back from Philly putting up 15 6 and 5 for the team before the team then traded him to the Milwaukee Bucks for our first-round pick in back then nobody knew what Philly was doing and why they just traded their rookie of the year for draft pick but it turns out they actually realized what his true ceiling would be on a good team and traded and while his value was at the highest and for them has turned out to be a great move seeing where his career is gone because the next year he'd only average 11 a game for the Bucks before getting treated again to the bowls where he put up six a game and has since played very limited minutes for the magic and Rockets putting up only about five points a game for them so that's how he became a one-hit wonder and while the thought of this bad Philly team is still on our mind we should probably bring up someone who was in a very similar position in number two with jahlil okafor and at this time Philly was still rebuilding so they picked Jahlil third overall keep in mind though that they had just traded it for Nerlens Noel two years prior and picked Joe L&B the year before but that didn't stop them from picking Jalil as their third center in three years and I would think that the mindset here with drafting Joelle and Jalil was that they wanted to use their picks and get the best player available then trade whoever didn't fit into their system and I mean that's pretty much what they did but while MB was out with an injury Noel and Okafor played side by side and Jalil was able to put up 17 points and seven rebounds a game by far the best season of his NBA career and things were looking great for him he finished fifth and the Rookie of the Year voting and his future looked really promising but the next year and beed returned from an injury for the first half of the season and was the clear standout of the three when he averaged twenty and eight as a rookie which cost over four minutes opportunities and his stats to drop down to just 11 and five as a sophomore before flat-out losing a spot on the roster altogether in his third year Philly no longer wanted him and they couldn't even find a trade as hard as they looked because his value in the league was so low and how could this happen how could he averaged 17 and 7 and then two years later bu unwanted across the entire league well he's 7 feet tall and 275 pounds it was easy for him to post up and score at ease on the team that didn't need wins and didn't really have much of a system but that style where he stops the ball move and needs to post up on every possession has pretty much gone extinct in today's game so for a team that's not trying to tank over for style isn't useful eventually though he did get traded to the nets were in limited minutes he averaged six points in three rebounds and then sided with the pelicans last season where he averaged similar stats but did show flashes the dominance while ad was out with an injury so while up to this point he's definitely been a one-hit wonder he is still only 23 so there's hope that he still can one day transition his game to fit into today's NBA number three Jeremy Lin who is one of the more obvious one-hit wonders and by far the biggest we've ever seen and most of us know the story but maybe don't know why Lin was never the same afterwards so I'll lay it out like this Jeremy was never given a proper opportunity going undrafted bouncing around the d-league and then being the 15th man on a couple of NBA rosters for years before he finally ended up on the Knicks and because of injuries and players having a bad night he was given an opportunity early in the first quarter of a game against the Nets and after only playing 55 minutes all season long he came out on fire and put up 25 7 and 5 for the game then we're going to play even better once Carmelo Anthony went out with an injury as well as Amar'e Stoudemire missing some games where Lin were put up 23 against John Wall 38 against Kobe and hit a game-winner on the Raptors and in this seven-game stretch without Carmelo Lin led the Knicks who were previously 11 and 15 to a 6 and 1 record by averaging 25 points a game Linsanity was at its peak but then Melo came back slowed down the ball movement and didn't let Jeremy keep doing his thing and the Knicks went 2 and 6 over the next eight games then over the next two weeks Jeremy would still play solid but finished a season averaging 15 and 6 before his season came to an end because of an injury Mike D'Antoni would later resign from the team as their head coach and go on a podcast to say that there was a way to keep Linsanity going but Mauri weren't willing to sacrifice and they were jealous of the attention he was getting after that season though the Knicks said that they would match any offer Lin gets up to a billion dollars in free agency to keep him but then shortly after signed Raymond Felton so I don't think there was any truth to that the Rockets then offered him a bad deal then Jeremy had to play in the backcourt as a second option to James Harden still played solid averaging 13 and 5 for two seasons but then had to play alongside an agent Kobe Bryant on the Lakers got signed as a backup to Kemba Walker and Charlotte played limited games in Brooklyn due to an injury and since has played limited minutes in Atlanta and Toronto and is now out of the league it's crazy looking back to think that linsanity really all happened over the course of about 3 weeks but I mean back then ever since Carmelo Anthony returned to the lineup and took over Jeremy's never been given the opportunity to be the guy on a team and probably never will again it just makes you wonder though was Linsanity just a fluke or was he just misused ever since Melo returned either way though he goes down as a one-hit wonder and so does number 4 and Lance Stephenson and Lance is kind of an odd one his first season will league he only played 12 games and in his second season he played 35 games before falling completely out of the rotation for the second half of the year but in his third year Danny Granger serious injuries started which meant that Lance took advantage of the opportunity became the full-time starter and put up career bests eight points four rebounds and three assists the game then the next season broke out by putting up 14 7 and 4 with a leak high five triple doubles he finished second in the NBA for the Most Improved Player Award and was really thought to have been snubbed from the all-star team that year because along with everything else that he did he helped Paul George lead the Pacers to the first seed in the Eastern Conference nearly all season long it was by far his best season in while the statistics aren't anything too impressive he was thought of as a real threat for the Pacers alongside PG in Hibbard Plus this was also the year with the infamous ear blow took place in the playoffs but after this last tested the market and left the Pacers where he never even got close to being at an all-star level again he's played for six different teams since then never in a starting role and never averaging over to nine points again and now is on his way to play in the Chinese Basketball Association this year I mean this was a case of where he had great chemistry with his team and was in the perfect conditions to succeed and never found somewhere where you fit in like that again number five Tyreke Evans as some of you may know Tyreke Evans was another guy to peak as a player in his rookie season where he won the Rookie of the Year award by a longshot for averaging numbers that only Michael Jordan Oscar Robertson and LeBron James were able to as rookies when he put up 20 points five rebounds and five assists a game as a six six player playing point guard and he was one of the first position this big guys to play point guard in this recent era and while he was added he could drive to the basket better than nearly anyone in the league and score with ease his only weakness though was his three-point shot which was able to be overlooked because his rookie season made people believe that he was the league's next superstar player that he was gonna be great for years to come but that's not how things worked out because for the rest of his time in Sacramento he was either getting injured or playing out of position as small forward thanks to Marcus Thornton and Isaiah Thomas joining the team so things weren't going as planned and he didn't get another opportunity at point guard until five years later on the pelicans where he played great and helped him to the playoffs but would face serious injuries the next two seasons then he bounced around the league before he ended up in Memphis and got another chance to play point guard and played so good that he averaged 19 5 and 5 on 40% from 3 that he finally brought back some of the hype around him to the point where this past season people really expected big things again but instead he had by far the worst year of his career putting up just 10 - and 2 for the Pacers and has found himself out of the league for violating the league's anti-drug program I mean it seemed like Indiana was really his chance to turn things around after not living up to the hype from having one of the best of rookie seasons of all time but instead things went the other way which make him a true one-hit wonder number 6 Devin Harris well Devin Harris was great in college and a few solid years before and after his one-hit wonder season he never had one that compared to 2008 and nine when he made the all-star team for putting up 21-7 and three for the New Jersey Nets it was by far the best season of his career and one where things really fell off for him after it happened and he got to that point like this after having a slow start on the Mavs he got traded to the Nets and found himself teaming with Vince Carter on a bad team and thanks to playing with Vince it really allowed him to break out because he had new opportunities with a star player that he never had before but when Carter was traded the next season because of money issues the nets were flat-out terrible going Oh an 18 to start the season finishing with a 12 and 70 record and with Harris dropping down to putting up just seventeen and six on the year and Vince Carter getting traded was really the turning point for him because that's where everything went downhill soon after he got traded to the Jazz they played in Atlanta and has played for Dallas since then but has never been able to even average to double digits again after his one-year with Utah for him I think a situation was really similar to Lance Stephenson and that he had the perfect team for him and the perfect players around him to complement his game in his all-star year but once things change he never found that same spot for himself again in the league and his times up for that to happen seeing that he's 36 years old and it's too late for most of the rest of the guys in this video aside from Jill Okafor but hey not everyone can be great if you enjoyed the video though don't forget to Like subscribe and I'll catch you next time

Channel: Austin Sweatt

Views: 876,352

Rating: 4.9094963 out of 5

Keywords: nba, basketball, lebron james, lonzo ball, lakers, okc, thunder, russell westbrook, paul george, warriors, klay thompson, steph curry, kevin durant, demarcus cousins, draymond green, rockets, chris paul, james harden, carmelo anthony, kawhi leonard, kyrie irving, celtics, chris smoove, mike korzemba, korzemba, jxmyhighroller, cashnasty, oprah sideverson, 2hype, lsk, kristopher london, troydan, reacts, jesserthelazer, lostnunbound, joel embiid, ben simmons, giannis antetokounmpo, 2k20

Id: DUNahqdVXuA

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2019