Every general manager is bound to make mistakes in the NBA draft. There are too many variables to get every decision right.
But if there is one realistic goal, it would be avoiding this list.
Most of the mistakes featured here set their respective teams back for years, sometimes even decades. For the few teams that overcame these mistakes and still won a title soon thereafter, you can only imagine how many more titles they would have won if they got the decision right.
We put extra emphasis on mistakes made with early first-round picks, especially when only one team deserved to be mentioned for its gaffe. Every team that passed on Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, or Nikola Jokić grew to regret it, but they all made the same mistake, making it unfair to single one out here.
We also considered bad draft-day trades. And though this list skews more toward recent times, we have a couple of gaffes from before the 1976 ABA-NBA merger.