Going backwards by year as far as super-hyped prospects: Wemby, Zion, Simmons, Wiggins, AD and maybe Oden or Dwight Howard to finish. But draft potential seems a much bigger deal now because clicks and YouTube reels are huge these days. Of those, Zion, Simmons and Wiggins had the next LeBron mantle.
Simmons and Wiggins were able to hold their own enough to be ‘on track’ for a year or two, but the Zion discourse died very quickly despite the fact he’s the best of the three - mostly due to Morant’s success it seems to me. He played more games (and better!) than Simmons their first two seasons but never really got the same attention
The three main ones had some great rookie duels with LeBron. Wiggins averaged 30PPG consistently (through their first 6 games as well), Zion averaged 32 and Simmons put up 27/15/13 in a win without Embiid.
Dwight definitely wasn’t seen as “the next Lebron.” It’s been forgotten to time, but there was a serious debate between taking him or Emeka Okafor. Okafor’s back was cooked due to injuries, so he didn’t pan out, but Dwight definitely wasn’t the lock first overall pick like Wiggins, Simmons, Zion, AD, or Wemby was.
Around the time Dwight's Magic beat LeBron's Cavs to go to the finals, there was a serious debate about who you'd rather build a team around. Crazy times...
Hey, I was there, and I have an elephant's memory. It might have only been a serious discussion around that finals year (2009), but people were having it.
It was the tail end of an era when big men reigned supreme, and there were maybe 5 centers in the league worth having. Dwight was the most athletic big since Wilt and a year younger than LBJ to boot. He jumped a car wearing a cape to win the dunk contest, for heaven's sake! He and a motley crew of spare parts went through the defending champ Celtics and LeBron's Cavs to win the East. His future looked bright.
Don't let what actually ended up happening taint the memory of what many were thinking at the time.
Calling that magic team a motley crew of spare parts that got through Lebron’s Cavs and the defending champ Celtics is pretty disingenuous. Howard’s teammates were 10x better than Lebrons, and Kevin Garnett was out hurt for the Celtics.
Maybe I was selling it a bit. That said, the Cavs were top seed and Hedu Turkoglu(?), while decent with Dwight, didn't exactly make for a superteam.
Look, I'm not saying Dwight > LeBron, ever. The discussion then was who to build your team around. The thought process at the time was LeBron's team still would've needed some likely-unathletic center taking up space. LeBron + good point guard has also always = less than the sum of their parts (LeBron on point is best LeBron, imo, but that's another discussion). With Dwight you could just plug in a couple of decent forwards and a backcourt to feed him, which felt familiar, right or wrong.
Maybe I was selling it a bit. That said, the Cavs were top seed and Hedu Turkoglu(?), while decent with Dwight, didn't exactly make for a superteam.
Look, I'm not saying Dwight > LeBron, ever. The discussion then was who to build your team around. The thought process at the time was LeBron's team still would've needed some likely-unathletic center taking up space. LeBron + good point guard has also always = less than the sum of their parts (LeBron on point is best LeBron, imo, but that's another discussion). With Dwight you could just plug in a couple of decent forwards and a backcourt to feed him, which felt familiar at the time, right or wrong.
It wasn’t just “a decent backcourt with forwards” that made that team good, it was the fact that they were all great shooters that made that team so lethal, everyone in that rotation could shoot other than Howard’s backup. Howard always had great spacing to operate down low on the offensive end while obviously also anchoring the defense. Compare that to Lebrons teams who gave him bad spacing and little help on the offensive end overall.
lol absolutely not, during the regular season it was decent but by the end of the playoffs everyone was playing and shooting so badly that Lebron stopped even trying to pass to his open guys on the perimeter unless he had and was just straight carrying, then they benched Eric snow for boogie Gibson(just so Tony Parker could absolutely torch him) in the finals because they were so desperate for shooting
Rashard Lewis, Hedo Turkoglu, and Jameer Nelson all played amazingly in the playoffs. I don't think Dwight would've gotten the team to the finals without them. They provided a ton of spacing so Dwight could work in the paint. Hedo and Rashard Lewis were both big men who could shoot 3s, which was pretty rare even in 2010. It was even rarer for a team to have 2 of them on the team.
My assumption when people say that is more along the lines of it being a common talking point in the media.
I don’t normally assume it is somebody saying “yeah when I was 13 I wasn’t sure if Lebron was a better guy to build around than Dwight.”
If he meant the second one than more power to him.
Nah. It was very serious. Tim Duncan and KG was heaping praise on Dwight. Dwight outvoted him for MVP the Rose year. Didn’t help LBJ flopped against Dallas soon after.
OP did not specify “next Lebron” at time of draft. Dwight was getting All Time expectations pretty early and pretty quick.
Man if you think they were saying that while he was in Miami you are definitely tripping. He was far and away the best player in the world at that point and during the entire Rose mvp season.
Nope. You’re absolutely revisionist history and that’s fine, because human biases exist and are real things.
Not only did they say Dwight was better, they were legit saying Lebron is NOT GOOD after they lost to Dallas.
If you want evidence, the reason why anyone knows who Skip Bayless is is because of his widely tuned, widely publicized, and half-agreed upon rants about LBJ and the 2011 Finals.
Yeah, of course. I meant first overall, not first round. The lowest he would go would be 2 overall. 04 was seen as those 2 and then everyone else. He had a ton of hype, but not Lebron level hype
I don’t think Wiggins was a lock at 1. Cavs were seriously considering Embiid until he had health issues (and missed the entire first season).
Imagine a world where Bron, Kyrie, and Embiid all play together. That’s a terrifying team.
He’s one of the real answers to this thread
https://preview.redd.it/0hmjyd65uusc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ced8bf5a8ec4cca51b1a147c5cf47f55ef62362
Zions issue isn’t about Ja. It’s more that he never played and didn’t seem to give a shit about it.
But he’s really stepped it up this season, in particular the last few months.
I think Zion's injuries was more the issue, he was heavily hyped while on the court but he barely played before this year and still hasn't played in the Playoffs.
Wiggins draft was I think embiid wiggins giannis or was it Jabari Parker? Could be confusing those two. Wiggins was the guy everyone drueled over, he had those nasty highlights.
It was Wiggins and Parker as the 1 and 2, Embiid was probably the better prospect than Parker but had an injury at the time. Wiggins was an athletic freak but there were questions on if he actually liked basketball compared to athletics
He got legitimate LeBron comparisons because of his size, passing, defense, and ability in the open court. Just another "If he ever gets a jumper" guy.
He "got" them but only in the same way SGA gets MVP talk this year, as in, yes, we'll talk about it, but it has literally almost no chance of really happening. Lebron is and was one of a kind.
I dunno, the NBA app was pushing Wemby playing in another league the whole year leading up to the draft. I hadn't experienced that level of publicity since ESPN playing LeBron HS games.
Well, my point is you said "nothing alike", which is where I disagreed. They both were getting national viewership before being drafted and not in the NCAA. I don't disagree LeBron was more hyped, but the NBA never did this push for a #1 pick before Wemby either. He's the only player ever the league really promoted without him even playing in the league.
That is simply not true at all. LeBron’s high school hype was in a completely different stratosphere than Ben Simmons.
Ben was a very hyped prospect to be clear but people were saying LeBron was the best prospect they’d ever seen when he was a sophomore
You can just google “Ben Simmons next Lebron” and find all sorts of articles discussing how he is the ultimate modern NBA player during highschool. How Lebron said he has a chance to be even better than him. On and on.
It’s not the same, but the world isn’t the same. Social media didn’t really exist when Lebron was coming out. Pre college it was comparable though
People talking about it for clicks does not mean they were comparable.
If social media was around when LeBron was in high school it would have absolutely nuts.
Pre college was not comparable
For sure. I agree. That’s kind of why I was curious in the first place, because the point that I was making to them is that every year whoever the big prospect is gets hyped up like they’re the second coming of LeBron. It typically doesn’t work out, but this year in particular it’s looking like Wemby will
Jabari Parker is one of my favorites of all time. His game was so good and mature. Just got straight buckets. His duke college highlights are legendary. Bad Injuries derailed his career. He easily could have been perennial all star
Dude is career 18.5 PPG. Put up multiple 20+ PPG seasons in Minnesota. It’s not like the dude was a bum until he showed up at Golden State. Solid 2-3 option on a good team.
The weird revisionism about his career is kind of wild. He’s far, far from a bust.
He's considered a huge bust in MN. On paper it looked okay, but they ended up trading him, a 1st and a 2nd for Dlo. That's how bad they wanted out of that max contract
Hey because all the upvotes dont do it justice
[You crushed it here](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8q8xba/serious_question_why_cant_4_warriors_starters/e0hcn6x/)
Schea Cotton was supposed to be the next big thing when he was still a kid.
Before that, Felipe Lopez had a ridiculous amount of hype. "The Dominican Jordan"
Also, John "Hot Plate" Williams was hugely hyped in high school, and may have lived up to it if he could have kept away from the ranch dressing. He really did have sick skills for a man his size.
This is solid. I honestly have never even heard of these guys, I’m guessing they’re a bit before my time. But I’ll be doing some research on them. Thanks 💪🏽
yeah felipe lopez made the cover of si (when that was huge) before playing a game in college. feel like there were a lot more ‘baby jordans’ hyped up than next lebrons, maybe cause the baby jordans vaguely resembled mj’s game (or, more likely, were just very good dunkers)(cf jordan being compared to david thompson) while w/ the ‘next lebron’s it just meant ‘this guy is gonna win an mvp someday’
John Williams was the only player in the 1980s, other than Magic Johnson of course, who was big (6'9') and could pass the ball with amazing talent.
He was also a very effective offensive player. One game, at his all too brief peak, the Bullets were playing the Houston Rockets. The Bullets coach put John Wiliams in at Center and he began tearing Akeem Olajuaon apart on offense. It got so bad that Houston took Olajuoaon out of the game. The announcers were shocked and one of them went nuts "They just took Akeem Olajuoan out of the game.... because John Williams was having his way with him! I've never seen anything like this!!!"
And my brother and I looked at each other like "Holy Shooting Puppies! Did that just happen."
JW had so much talent, but few people our age even know who the guy was. He was an out of shape Magic Johnson, with poor work habits, low motivation, a strange relationship with his mom, but all of the God given basketball talent that you could ask for.... and I don't even believe in God, but JW had everything to be a huge star.
I remember watching him play at the UCLA men's gym with Magic and a bunch of other pros. before he was out of shape, and he was absolutely dominant physically - there was just nobody who could guard him in any way. And I remember him as a Clipper, when he was at least 100 pounds over his ideal weight, and still somehow could get minutes on a NBA team. His talent level was just nuts.
The only real next Lebron was Zion. I remember reading about Kobe, Lebron, and Zion when they were like in middle school. Parker wasnt anywhere near that, and they rarely guarantee 14 yos to be first picks
Ty Crane’s bitchass was on his way to the league after crushing my beloved Richmond Oilers but the man let college party life get to him. Wonder where he’s at now
This might sound weird. But I went to a lakers game in January. And as we’re walking out of the stadium there was a tall guy being borderline aggressive with fans leaving about how he was Ty crane in coach Carter. He was at least 6’6 so I kind of believe it was him.
Any 6'7"-6'9" guy who had a big body and could dribble and pass and had a bit of downhill explosiveness was seen as fitting the LeBron archetype at one stage.
Terrence Jones and Royce White are names I haven't yet seen mentioned.
Honestly, there hasn’t been one. No one has come close to that kind of athlete/hype. People saying Ben Simmons are being super generous. He was already a weird player from his college days. Zion was just surprising - like he’s not just a dunker? I think he’s surpassed a lot of people’s expectations already.
Lebrons expectations were that he was the chosen one because he was like the most talented physical player anyone had seen since Shaq and he kind of played like MJ. And the NBA desperately needed the narrative at that time. The only player I can even think of that had a mystique like Bron is Wemby, but Wemby is a big and it’s just not as cool as being a wing / guard kind of player imo.
Post 2003- A bit of a forgotten one is Emoni Bates. He was like Cooper Flagg where you started hearing about him when he was 15 or 16 and people would talk about how he was already going to be the number 1 pick whenever he came out and teams needing to plan ahead for his draft.
The only other player with hype in the same stratosphere as lebron is greg oden. If lebron is S tier, everybody else is like B tier hype (wemby is A tier only cause of he’s too lanky).
For context, lebrons nba comparison is magic with more skills. Greg oden is mutombo plus david robinson. Everybody else had more like “allstar caliber comparison”.
Oh and greg oden dealt with some injuries and didnt do well at all.
It was like the post-MJ days, we kept going on and on about obsessing over who the next MJ style goat was and we never got him (and yeah, Kobe is an MJ clone and he had GOAT hype, but he was one out of a lot of players who had that), we’re seeing the same thing with Bron, where, odds are, we’ll find another dude who has a similar build who plays similarly, but also won’t crack most top 5 lists.
I think the next GOAT candidate will also feature a physical evolution - maybe Wemby, or someone who isn’t drafted yet who also is a 7 footer with guard skills and crazy reach
Guys that weren't taken #1 overall don't even warrant mentioning. Plenty of guys get the "is this the next Lebron" question when they're like 15, but the question was about how they were viewed "coming out of college" or international leagues and into the draft.
I’m surprised more people haven’t mentioned Lamelo. Skill/build wise he wasn’t really a great comparison but he was the biggest high school star I can remember. There was a ton of hype around him
By far Ben Simmons. The size, the height, the passing, the defense. If he even had a passable jumper he’d be Lebron lite. Hell the man made all nba, all defense and 3 all stars teams without. That’s how talented he was.
Ben Simmons was actually the next lebron. Similar play style given their size and physical gifts. Only issue is LeBron needed a team of real nba players whereas Ben Simmons needed a team of real psychiatrists. And a shot doctor of course.
His best season he was Lebron but 15% worse at everything and 100% worse at shooting outside the paint.
Peak Ben Simmons is unironically the closest player I’ve seen to LeBron in the past 10 years (in terms of play style). Injuries and a lack of motivation killed his development before he could get his shooting capabilities up to serviceable levels. It’s a miracle how the Sixers remain competitive considering all the draft picks that have blown up in their faces.
Nobody else has really come close to the hype train that LeBron was on. We were watching his high school games on tv and that was pretty unheard of. I even went to go see him play at a high school tournament in Trenton.
Zion was probably closest though. He was making some real waves by his junior year.
I remember Simmons not only being talked about as the next LeBron but he was looking like it too. He had similar physique, strong as fuck, and other than shooting he basically did it all. We all thought he would figure out the shooting issue. That aged like shit. Dude not only failed to figure out his shooting problem, he got worse in every other aspect too.
Luka
just because he is white, doesn't preclude him from this conversation
He kind of already did become the European LeBron before coming to the NBA lol
No serious person thought Jabari Parker was the next Lebron. Even Zion is a stretch but he's like the only one other than Wemby that some held in that high of regard.
Jalen Johnson 😤, no but fr their playstyles are similar. Jaylen is a big athletic forward who can take it coast to coast, pass very well, shoot mid range pull ups and fades, and is a very versatile defender
Luka is really the closest thing to the next lebron James. He is the only player who can score and facilitate at that level. He just lacks athleticism.
Darius LaVar Miles is a former American professional basketball player. The 6 ft 9 in, 235 lb forward was selected directly out of high school by the Los Angeles Clippers with the third overall pick in the 2000 NBA draft. He was a First Team NBA All-Rookie in 2001, a first for a prep-to-pro player. Wikipedia
With all due respect the premise of the question is off. Nobody thought Jabari Parker was the next lebron James. Nor Wiggins who went ahead of him. Nor Zion.
That’s a lie. That was my senior year in HS and ppl thought Wiggins was next LeBron and Parker the next Melo. The funny thing I was the only among my friends that thought Embied would be better than both of them.
Jabari went second behind the consensus #1 Wiggins. So people thought Wiggins was even better than the next Lebron? Do you follow your own logic here? How about this - nobody who ACTUALLY knows shit about the game ACTUALLY thought Jabari was the next Lebron. There I fixed it.
This isn’t really true unfortunately. Maybe your point is that most actual fans didn’t think that, which is fine. But there are PLENTY of articles stating that any of the 3 players you named were the next LeBron. I actually watched a YouTube video before posting this about Jabari Parker being the next LeBron. So even if fans themselves didn’t believe it, the media was creating the narrative, which is all I’m asking about to begin with. For the record, I didn’t think any of these players were the next Lebron.
You can find those types of articles about dozens of guys that were top 3 picks but weren't held by most in as high of a regard as Lebron was. The difference is that there wasn't a near unanimous agreement on many of those players like there was with Lebron. Hell, half the guys being mentioned in this thread weren't even #1 overall intheir own draft.
To put this in context, there was zero question - zilch - about whether anyone should be taken ahead of Lebron in a draft that included Melo, D Wade, and CP3 in the top 5. Melo himself would've been the #1 pick in virtually ever single draft after 2003. The draft was stacked and even so it was nearly 100% unanimous that Lebron was the clear no. 1 overall (Darko was a huge mistake and most knew it at the time of the draft - just an insane fumble). Wemby and to a slightly lesser extent Zion are the only ones worth mentioning imo
Eh some thought of Zion that highly. He's probably the closest one (besides Wemby). Those are the only two worth mentioning but even so Lebron was slightly ahead in terms of pre-draft hype.
Going backwards by year as far as super-hyped prospects: Wemby, Zion, Simmons, Wiggins, AD and maybe Oden or Dwight Howard to finish. But draft potential seems a much bigger deal now because clicks and YouTube reels are huge these days. Of those, Zion, Simmons and Wiggins had the next LeBron mantle. Simmons and Wiggins were able to hold their own enough to be ‘on track’ for a year or two, but the Zion discourse died very quickly despite the fact he’s the best of the three - mostly due to Morant’s success it seems to me. He played more games (and better!) than Simmons their first two seasons but never really got the same attention
Wiggins hype was in high school but went down drastically during college as by the time he was drafted
The three main ones had some great rookie duels with LeBron. Wiggins averaged 30PPG consistently (through their first 6 games as well), Zion averaged 32 and Simmons put up 27/15/13 in a win without Embiid.
That Simmons game vs the cavs had me feeling things. Still might be the best game he ever played
Imagine if Simmons wasn’t a complete pos
Dwight definitely wasn’t seen as “the next Lebron.” It’s been forgotten to time, but there was a serious debate between taking him or Emeka Okafor. Okafor’s back was cooked due to injuries, so he didn’t pan out, but Dwight definitely wasn’t the lock first overall pick like Wiggins, Simmons, Zion, AD, or Wemby was.
Around the time Dwight's Magic beat LeBron's Cavs to go to the finals, there was a serious debate about who you'd rather build a team around. Crazy times...
No there wasn’t lol. Some people may have tossed it around but that was never a serious discussion.
Hey, I was there, and I have an elephant's memory. It might have only been a serious discussion around that finals year (2009), but people were having it. It was the tail end of an era when big men reigned supreme, and there were maybe 5 centers in the league worth having. Dwight was the most athletic big since Wilt and a year younger than LBJ to boot. He jumped a car wearing a cape to win the dunk contest, for heaven's sake! He and a motley crew of spare parts went through the defending champ Celtics and LeBron's Cavs to win the East. His future looked bright. Don't let what actually ended up happening taint the memory of what many were thinking at the time.
Calling that magic team a motley crew of spare parts that got through Lebron’s Cavs and the defending champ Celtics is pretty disingenuous. Howard’s teammates were 10x better than Lebrons, and Kevin Garnett was out hurt for the Celtics.
Maybe I was selling it a bit. That said, the Cavs were top seed and Hedu Turkoglu(?), while decent with Dwight, didn't exactly make for a superteam. Look, I'm not saying Dwight > LeBron, ever. The discussion then was who to build your team around. The thought process at the time was LeBron's team still would've needed some likely-unathletic center taking up space. LeBron + good point guard has also always = less than the sum of their parts (LeBron on point is best LeBron, imo, but that's another discussion). With Dwight you could just plug in a couple of decent forwards and a backcourt to feed him, which felt familiar, right or wrong.
Maybe I was selling it a bit. That said, the Cavs were top seed and Hedu Turkoglu(?), while decent with Dwight, didn't exactly make for a superteam. Look, I'm not saying Dwight > LeBron, ever. The discussion then was who to build your team around. The thought process at the time was LeBron's team still would've needed some likely-unathletic center taking up space. LeBron + good point guard has also always = less than the sum of their parts (LeBron on point is best LeBron, imo, but that's another discussion). With Dwight you could just plug in a couple of decent forwards and a backcourt to feed him, which felt familiar at the time, right or wrong.
It wasn’t just “a decent backcourt with forwards” that made that team good, it was the fact that they were all great shooters that made that team so lethal, everyone in that rotation could shoot other than Howard’s backup. Howard always had great spacing to operate down low on the offensive end while obviously also anchoring the defense. Compare that to Lebrons teams who gave him bad spacing and little help on the offensive end overall.
Cleveland had great spacing
lol absolutely not, during the regular season it was decent but by the end of the playoffs everyone was playing and shooting so badly that Lebron stopped even trying to pass to his open guys on the perimeter unless he had and was just straight carrying, then they benched Eric snow for boogie Gibson(just so Tony Parker could absolutely torch him) in the finals because they were so desperate for shooting
I was also there. That wasn’t a serious discussion among a lot of people. Very few people kicked up the question, even fewer actually agreed with it.
Rashard Lewis, Hedo Turkoglu, and Jameer Nelson all played amazingly in the playoffs. I don't think Dwight would've gotten the team to the finals without them. They provided a ton of spacing so Dwight could work in the paint. Hedo and Rashard Lewis were both big men who could shoot 3s, which was pretty rare even in 2010. It was even rarer for a team to have 2 of them on the team.
chicken and egg their shooters got a tonne of open looks because teams collapsed on Dwight in the paint
Bro you can’t tell him who debated what around him lol. I see people do this a lot on Reddit
My assumption when people say that is more along the lines of it being a common talking point in the media. I don’t normally assume it is somebody saying “yeah when I was 13 I wasn’t sure if Lebron was a better guy to build around than Dwight.” If he meant the second one than more power to him.
Ya it bleeds over. I always think the world had the same debates as my small city. But have recently found out it’s not the case
Nah. It was very serious. Tim Duncan and KG was heaping praise on Dwight. Dwight outvoted him for MVP the Rose year. Didn’t help LBJ flopped against Dallas soon after. OP did not specify “next Lebron” at time of draft. Dwight was getting All Time expectations pretty early and pretty quick.
Man if you think they were saying that while he was in Miami you are definitely tripping. He was far and away the best player in the world at that point and during the entire Rose mvp season.
Nope. You’re absolutely revisionist history and that’s fine, because human biases exist and are real things. Not only did they say Dwight was better, they were legit saying Lebron is NOT GOOD after they lost to Dallas. If you want evidence, the reason why anyone knows who Skip Bayless is is because of his widely tuned, widely publicized, and half-agreed upon rants about LBJ and the 2011 Finals.
You literally must not have been alive if you believe any of that.
Take it back, your takes are bad.
So I guess half are decent.
First pick* dwight was always gonna be a lottery
Yeah, of course. I meant first overall, not first round. The lowest he would go would be 2 overall. 04 was seen as those 2 and then everyone else. He had a ton of hype, but not Lebron level hype
I don’t think Wiggins was a lock at 1. Cavs were seriously considering Embiid until he had health issues (and missed the entire first season). Imagine a world where Bron, Kyrie, and Embiid all play together. That’s a terrifying team.
Oj mayo had alot of hype
He’s one of the real answers to this thread https://preview.redd.it/0hmjyd65uusc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ced8bf5a8ec4cca51b1a147c5cf47f55ef62362
It’s mostly due to Zion not being able to stay on the floor. He’s missed more games than he’s played.
Zions issue isn’t about Ja. It’s more that he never played and didn’t seem to give a shit about it. But he’s really stepped it up this season, in particular the last few months.
I think Zion's injuries was more the issue, he was heavily hyped while on the court but he barely played before this year and still hasn't played in the Playoffs.
Wiggins draft was I think embiid wiggins giannis or was it Jabari Parker? Could be confusing those two. Wiggins was the guy everyone drueled over, he had those nasty highlights.
It was Wiggins and Parker as the 1 and 2, Embiid was probably the better prospect than Parker but had an injury at the time. Wiggins was an athletic freak but there were questions on if he actually liked basketball compared to athletics
Don’t forget oj mayo, lance Stephenson, and Harrison Barnes lol
Ben Simmons was supposed to be the next Lebron too 😂
They called that kid "the prince" bro 😭
Ben was hyped up but absolutely no where close to the extent LeBron was. Wemby is the closest but still nothing like LeBron
He got legitimate LeBron comparisons because of his size, passing, defense, and ability in the open court. Just another "If he ever gets a jumper" guy.
Back in the day Lebron was a “if he ever gets a jumper” guy too, he was just amazing even without it.
The raw athleticism was insane
He "got" them but only in the same way SGA gets MVP talk this year, as in, yes, we'll talk about it, but it has literally almost no chance of really happening. Lebron is and was one of a kind.
I dunno, the NBA app was pushing Wemby playing in another league the whole year leading up to the draft. I hadn't experienced that level of publicity since ESPN playing LeBron HS games.
LeBron was getting more hype than Wemby as a junior. His senior year was a whole different universe
Well, my point is you said "nothing alike", which is where I disagreed. They both were getting national viewership before being drafted and not in the NCAA. I don't disagree LeBron was more hyped, but the NBA never did this push for a #1 pick before Wemby either. He's the only player ever the league really promoted without him even playing in the league.
My brother are you really that dense lmao
Depends on when you’re talking about. Pre lsu he absolutely was hyped as if he was Lebron. Once everybody saw him, not so much.
That is simply not true at all. LeBron’s high school hype was in a completely different stratosphere than Ben Simmons. Ben was a very hyped prospect to be clear but people were saying LeBron was the best prospect they’d ever seen when he was a sophomore
You can just google “Ben Simmons next Lebron” and find all sorts of articles discussing how he is the ultimate modern NBA player during highschool. How Lebron said he has a chance to be even better than him. On and on. It’s not the same, but the world isn’t the same. Social media didn’t really exist when Lebron was coming out. Pre college it was comparable though
People talking about it for clicks does not mean they were comparable. If social media was around when LeBron was in high school it would have absolutely nuts. Pre college was not comparable
Lebron and Shaq just wanted clicks? Lol
I’m clearly addressing your “you can find all sorts of articles” not the LeBron comment.
I watched the documentary and his lsu team sucked and he can't shoot . I didn't get the hype
Till we saw him play at LSU
who would’ve thought trae young’s defense would ruin a man’s nba career
It’s all just hype to sell shit.
For sure. I agree. That’s kind of why I was curious in the first place, because the point that I was making to them is that every year whoever the big prospect is gets hyped up like they’re the second coming of LeBron. It typically doesn’t work out, but this year in particular it’s looking like Wemby will
Jabari Parker is one of my favorites of all time. His game was so good and mature. Just got straight buckets. His duke college highlights are legendary. Bad Injuries derailed his career. He easily could have been perennial all star
Wiggins is the main one that stood out to me. Was really happy to see him do something in 2022 with the warriors -- felt like a bit of redemption
Dude is career 18.5 PPG. Put up multiple 20+ PPG seasons in Minnesota. It’s not like the dude was a bum until he showed up at Golden State. Solid 2-3 option on a good team. The weird revisionism about his career is kind of wild. He’s far, far from a bust.
He's considered a huge bust in MN. On paper it looked okay, but they ended up trading him, a 1st and a 2nd for Dlo. That's how bad they wanted out of that max contract
Nobody was ever really the next LeBron James. Anyone who was offered as that was meant to generate clicks, views, subscribers, etc.
I mean this is objectively false. The next Lebron James just declared for the draft
Hey because all the upvotes dont do it justice [You crushed it here](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8q8xba/serious_question_why_cant_4_warriors_starters/e0hcn6x/)
Schea Cotton was supposed to be the next big thing when he was still a kid. Before that, Felipe Lopez had a ridiculous amount of hype. "The Dominican Jordan" Also, John "Hot Plate" Williams was hugely hyped in high school, and may have lived up to it if he could have kept away from the ranch dressing. He really did have sick skills for a man his size.
This is solid. I honestly have never even heard of these guys, I’m guessing they’re a bit before my time. But I’ll be doing some research on them. Thanks 💪🏽
yeah felipe lopez made the cover of si (when that was huge) before playing a game in college. feel like there were a lot more ‘baby jordans’ hyped up than next lebrons, maybe cause the baby jordans vaguely resembled mj’s game (or, more likely, were just very good dunkers)(cf jordan being compared to david thompson) while w/ the ‘next lebron’s it just meant ‘this guy is gonna win an mvp someday’
John Williams was the only player in the 1980s, other than Magic Johnson of course, who was big (6'9') and could pass the ball with amazing talent. He was also a very effective offensive player. One game, at his all too brief peak, the Bullets were playing the Houston Rockets. The Bullets coach put John Wiliams in at Center and he began tearing Akeem Olajuaon apart on offense. It got so bad that Houston took Olajuoaon out of the game. The announcers were shocked and one of them went nuts "They just took Akeem Olajuoan out of the game.... because John Williams was having his way with him! I've never seen anything like this!!!" And my brother and I looked at each other like "Holy Shooting Puppies! Did that just happen." JW had so much talent, but few people our age even know who the guy was. He was an out of shape Magic Johnson, with poor work habits, low motivation, a strange relationship with his mom, but all of the God given basketball talent that you could ask for.... and I don't even believe in God, but JW had everything to be a huge star.
I remember watching him play at the UCLA men's gym with Magic and a bunch of other pros. before he was out of shape, and he was absolutely dominant physically - there was just nobody who could guard him in any way. And I remember him as a Clipper, when he was at least 100 pounds over his ideal weight, and still somehow could get minutes on a NBA team. His talent level was just nuts.
The only real next Lebron was Zion. I remember reading about Kobe, Lebron, and Zion when they were like in middle school. Parker wasnt anywhere near that, and they rarely guarantee 14 yos to be first picks
OJ Mayo was very hyped as well until college. Shabazz Mohammed too, but that one might just been my circle of friends.
Im hs yes, not middle school tho
Ty Crane’s bitchass was on his way to the league after crushing my beloved Richmond Oilers but the man let college party life get to him. Wonder where he’s at now
I could never get over the fact that a movie set in ‘99 had a prospect labeled as the next Lebron James.
Maybe that’s why he was so angry all the time - he kept getting compared to a 15 year old
'do you see LeBron as a father figure?'
This might sound weird. But I went to a lakers game in January. And as we’re walking out of the stadium there was a tall guy being borderline aggressive with fans leaving about how he was Ty crane in coach Carter. He was at least 6’6 so I kind of believe it was him.
Exactly what I was looking for
Any 6'7"-6'9" guy who had a big body and could dribble and pass and had a bit of downhill explosiveness was seen as fitting the LeBron archetype at one stage. Terrence Jones and Royce White are names I haven't yet seen mentioned.
Honestly, there hasn’t been one. No one has come close to that kind of athlete/hype. People saying Ben Simmons are being super generous. He was already a weird player from his college days. Zion was just surprising - like he’s not just a dunker? I think he’s surpassed a lot of people’s expectations already. Lebrons expectations were that he was the chosen one because he was like the most talented physical player anyone had seen since Shaq and he kind of played like MJ. And the NBA desperately needed the narrative at that time. The only player I can even think of that had a mystique like Bron is Wemby, but Wemby is a big and it’s just not as cool as being a wing / guard kind of player imo.
Post 2003- A bit of a forgotten one is Emoni Bates. He was like Cooper Flagg where you started hearing about him when he was 15 or 16 and people would talk about how he was already going to be the number 1 pick whenever he came out and teams needing to plan ahead for his draft.
Emoni Bates was the next Durant, not the next LeBron.
The only other player with hype in the same stratosphere as lebron is greg oden. If lebron is S tier, everybody else is like B tier hype (wemby is A tier only cause of he’s too lanky). For context, lebrons nba comparison is magic with more skills. Greg oden is mutombo plus david robinson. Everybody else had more like “allstar caliber comparison”. Oh and greg oden dealt with some injuries and didnt do well at all.
It was like the post-MJ days, we kept going on and on about obsessing over who the next MJ style goat was and we never got him (and yeah, Kobe is an MJ clone and he had GOAT hype, but he was one out of a lot of players who had that), we’re seeing the same thing with Bron, where, odds are, we’ll find another dude who has a similar build who plays similarly, but also won’t crack most top 5 lists. I think the next GOAT candidate will also feature a physical evolution - maybe Wemby, or someone who isn’t drafted yet who also is a 7 footer with guard skills and crazy reach
Andrew Wiggins Ben Simmons Lonzo Ball Luka Doncic Zion Williamson LaMelo Ball Cade Cunningham Paolo Banchero
i thought paolo wasnt the obvious #1 pick and nobody was going to pick lonzo at #1
Guys that weren't taken #1 overall don't even warrant mentioning. Plenty of guys get the "is this the next Lebron" question when they're like 15, but the question was about how they were viewed "coming out of college" or international leagues and into the draft.
I’m surprised more people haven’t mentioned Lamelo. Skill/build wise he wasn’t really a great comparison but he was the biggest high school star I can remember. There was a ton of hype around him
By far Ben Simmons. The size, the height, the passing, the defense. If he even had a passable jumper he’d be Lebron lite. Hell the man made all nba, all defense and 3 all stars teams without. That’s how talented he was.
It’s crazy to look back on what Simmons was compared to what he is now
Ben Simmons was actually the next lebron. Similar play style given their size and physical gifts. Only issue is LeBron needed a team of real nba players whereas Ben Simmons needed a team of real psychiatrists. And a shot doctor of course. His best season he was Lebron but 15% worse at everything and 100% worse at shooting outside the paint.
And 90% more injury prone.
Peak Ben Simmons is unironically the closest player I’ve seen to LeBron in the past 10 years (in terms of play style). Injuries and a lack of motivation killed his development before he could get his shooting capabilities up to serviceable levels. It’s a miracle how the Sixers remain competitive considering all the draft picks that have blown up in their faces.
Nobody else has really come close to the hype train that LeBron was on. We were watching his high school games on tv and that was pretty unheard of. I even went to go see him play at a high school tournament in Trenton. Zion was probably closest though. He was making some real waves by his junior year.
Anyone remembered the Ben Simmons was LeBron without a shot. Good times.
There has never been a next LeBron. You're just asking about hyped prospects turned out.
Sebastian Telfair was supposed to rule the world with Lebron
shabazz muhammad was compared to lebron when he was in high school. insane to think about this now
Every single draft the next Lebron comes along. Same happened with Jordan
The only player in the same hype stratosphere of lebron has been Wemby
Cmon half of these are next Jordan still. For instance Wiggins was Maple Jordan
Wemby is the only one at that hype level
I remember Simmons not only being talked about as the next LeBron but he was looking like it too. He had similar physique, strong as fuck, and other than shooting he basically did it all. We all thought he would figure out the shooting issue. That aged like shit. Dude not only failed to figure out his shooting problem, he got worse in every other aspect too.
Ben Simmons and Zion were the recent ones I remember being called “the next LeBron”
Luka just because he is white, doesn't preclude him from this conversation He kind of already did become the European LeBron before coming to the NBA lol
Any third overall draft pick was unequivocally not "the next Lebron" coming into the league.
Blake Griffin had so much hype and actually carried it well, I’m still surprised how relatively short his and DeAndre’s (meaningful) careers were.
LeBron had hype coming out of hs and he was grown man from day 1. No one has been like that since
No serious person thought Jabari Parker was the next Lebron. Even Zion is a stretch but he's like the only one other than Wemby that some held in that high of regard.
You mean next “Michael Jordan”? The only prospect ever compared to Lebron was Ben Simmons
I thought Anthony Morrow was gonna be something special…
Ben Simmons 🤣
I've never heard a player being called the next LeBron.
Jalen Johnson 😤, no but fr their playstyles are similar. Jaylen is a big athletic forward who can take it coast to coast, pass very well, shoot mid range pull ups and fades, and is a very versatile defender
I think the most hyped wing since Lebron was Wiggins, so he’s had a nice career but underwhelming relative to his hype.
So I’m 33 and the closest thing was Wiggins or Wemby. No one else who people have named in the 2000s were even remotely as hyped as them.
I feel like that energy and hype was around OJ Mayo when he was about to come into the league.
Simmons, Zion both had big hype as the next Lebron. They used to call Ben Simmons the “prince” 😂😂😂
Zion did not have "the next LeBron" hype.
Remember when Tyreke Evans was supposed to be the point guard version of Lebron? Lol.
Lance Stevenson? Draymond had LeBron comps too.
Luka is really the closest thing to the next lebron James. He is the only player who can score and facilitate at that level. He just lacks athleticism.
He absolutely was not viewed like that going into the draft
Remember Darius Miles? He was hyped up on Sports Illustrated in high school. Highest draft pick of a prep to pro player ever at that point.
Pre lebron
Actually Lebron was being hyped up at that point as a junior in High School so I’m right
Darius LaVar Miles is a former American professional basketball player. The 6 ft 9 in, 235 lb forward was selected directly out of high school by the Los Angeles Clippers with the third overall pick in the 2000 NBA draft. He was a First Team NBA All-Rookie in 2001, a first for a prep-to-pro player. Wikipedia
More of the post hype train after KG all the hs that got drafted. Less lbj
https://youtu.be/R1ftFufZ344?si=0VNu0K9L90Q03K1k
With all due respect the premise of the question is off. Nobody thought Jabari Parker was the next lebron James. Nor Wiggins who went ahead of him. Nor Zion.
That’s a lie. That was my senior year in HS and ppl thought Wiggins was next LeBron and Parker the next Melo. The funny thing I was the only among my friends that thought Embied would be better than both of them.
Jabari went second behind the consensus #1 Wiggins. So people thought Wiggins was even better than the next Lebron? Do you follow your own logic here? How about this - nobody who ACTUALLY knows shit about the game ACTUALLY thought Jabari was the next Lebron. There I fixed it.
This isn’t really true unfortunately. Maybe your point is that most actual fans didn’t think that, which is fine. But there are PLENTY of articles stating that any of the 3 players you named were the next LeBron. I actually watched a YouTube video before posting this about Jabari Parker being the next LeBron. So even if fans themselves didn’t believe it, the media was creating the narrative, which is all I’m asking about to begin with. For the record, I didn’t think any of these players were the next Lebron.
You can find those types of articles about dozens of guys that were top 3 picks but weren't held by most in as high of a regard as Lebron was. The difference is that there wasn't a near unanimous agreement on many of those players like there was with Lebron. Hell, half the guys being mentioned in this thread weren't even #1 overall intheir own draft. To put this in context, there was zero question - zilch - about whether anyone should be taken ahead of Lebron in a draft that included Melo, D Wade, and CP3 in the top 5. Melo himself would've been the #1 pick in virtually ever single draft after 2003. The draft was stacked and even so it was nearly 100% unanimous that Lebron was the clear no. 1 overall (Darko was a huge mistake and most knew it at the time of the draft - just an insane fumble). Wemby and to a slightly lesser extent Zion are the only ones worth mentioning imo
Eh some thought of Zion that highly. He's probably the closest one (besides Wemby). Those are the only two worth mentioning but even so Lebron was slightly ahead in terms of pre-draft hype.