One of the biggest lessons the NBA has taught is that no matter how hard things are, you can always turn things around. We’ve seen plenty of those cases with late draft picks, but some players didn’t have a lot of expectations around them when they came out of high school.
Four of the best NBA players in the association this season didn’t have a good ranking coming out of high school or didn’t even have a single star in their scouting report.
For instance, Damian Lillard had a two-star ranking when he joined Weber State; Russell Westbrook and Stephen Curry both were ranked with three stars when they went to UCLA and Davidson, respectively.
If that wasn’t enough, the most recent case of these ‘injustices’ happened when Ja Morant left Crestwood high school to play for Murray State. At the time, Morant didn’t have a single star in his ranking, which certainly hurt his college opportunities.
Not all NBA stars were five-star recruits or nationally ranked coming out of high school.⠀
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Proof that anything is possible 🙌 pic.twitter.com/xnmAfMRnXV
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) June 9, 2020
Now a lot of time has happened and Lillard, Westbrook and Curry are three of the best point guards in the league, reaching important stages and earning All-NBA honors throughout their careers. Moreover, Morant is just playing his rookie this year, taking the Memphis Grizzlies to the 8th seed in the West before the NBA suspended the season amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The Grizzlies weren’t expected to have a good season, but Ja and co. turned things around, surprising everybody around the league.
https://twitter.com/samizaynpiedKO/status/1270377397968347136
This proofs that anything is possible and that high school rankings don’t mean anything nowadays. Anthony Bennett was a 5-star recruit and we all know what happened with him and his career.
