Curses! Let's examine the mostly ugly, recent history of NBA No. 2 draft picks

Editor's note: This column originally was posted before the NBA Draft lottery last month.

On Tuesday, NBA officials will draw ping-pong balls out of a drum, and one lucky team will win the chance to draft generational talent Zion Williamson at No. 1. And while all the other lottery teams will suffer the disappointment of missing out on Zion, the team that gets the No. 2 pick is likely to draft a disappointment as well. The list of No. 1 picks is full of All-Stars, and the list of recent No. 2 picks is full of busts, bad fits, "tweeners" and projects. Historically, you’re better off picking third, fourth or even fifth. Getting the second pick feels like a blessing, but teams should be wary -- the No. 2 pick may as well be cursed.

Since 2008, the players picked No. 1 have combined for an MVP award, 28 All-Star appearances, six Rookie of the Year awards, two slam dunk titles, and two All-Star Game MVPs. Second picks from that time span have three All-Star appearances, none for the team that drafted them.

There hasn’t been a No. 2 pick succeed with his original team since Kevin Durant (2007) and LaMarcus Aldridge (2006), so unless you’re in a position to pick a 6-foot-11 scoring forward from Texas, you’re more likely to get the next Darko Milicic or Stromile Swift. 

There’s no single way No. 2 picks wash out. Michael Beasley, who has bounced around the league, has had problems with marijuana and defense. Hasheem Thabeet, a 7-3 center from the University of Connecticut via Tanzania, couldn’t play. Charlotte's Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has struggled with a broken shoulder and a broken jumper. Evan Turner can't do a lot of things well, including shooting threes, so he’s on his fourth NBA team (Portland). Derrick Williams, now out of NBA, was a “tweener” -- too small for power forward and too slow for small forward -- and Jabari Parker is a tweener who tore his ACL twice in Milwaukee. The 2014 second overall pick is on his third team, the Wizards.

Brooklyn's D’Angelo Russell made the All-Star team this year, but only after secretly taping teammate Nick Young and getting traded from the Lakers to dump Timofey Mozgov’s contract. Victor Oladipo has made two All-Star teams, but not until he reached Indiana, his third team. (Orlando turned Oladipo, the second pick in the 2013 draft, into half a season of Serge Ibaka.) 

It’s too soon to judge No. 2 picks Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball, but LeBron’s arrival and incessant trade rumors indicate they won’t be part of the Lakers' future. We shouldn’t expect the No. 2's to exceed the No. 1's, but the No. 3 pick has a far better track record. Former No. 3 picks include All-Stars James Harden, Al Horford, Joel Embiid and Bradley Beal. Recent No. 3 picks Jayson Tatum (2017) and Luka Doncic (2018) look like future All-Stars. 

Fourth picks Russell Westbrook and Mike Conley have had better careers than any No. 2 pick in the decade since KD, and if you go back a few more years, future Hall of Famers Chris Paul and Chris Bosh also went fourth. 

So why is the No. 2 pick that’s so cursed? There might be a psychological factor in knowing that you’re definitively the second choice, creating a career-long inferiority complex. It could be that teams have less information about high draft picks in the one-and-done era. The last five No. 2 picks have been freshmen, and six of the last seven, so teams are betting big on players that won’t be able to rent a car until after their rookie contracts expire.

While the teams are figuring out how good their new No. 2 pick is, they’ll be paying him over $7 million per year, which creates false urgency, and a cap crunch. Any team would gladly pay $8 million a year for Zion Williamson; paying nearly as much for Murray State's Ja Morant is less of a bargain.

But fundamentally, the problem with the No. 2 pick isn’t so much the players as it is the teams picking them. Over the last 11 years, teams picking second have a record of 230-656, winning 26 percent of their games. That’s an average record of 21-61, three games worse than the average record of teams drafting No. 1. And one reason teams are bad is they’re bad at developing young players. 

The Lakers had three straight No. 2 picks starting in 2015, but they haven’t had a shooting coach since the 2015-16 season. No wonder Lonzo can’t shoot! In the Tankapalooza era, it’s likely many of those teams were losing on purpose.

Once former 76ers general manager Sam Hinkle instituted “The Process” in Philadelphia, where they intentionally lost as much as possible to improve their draft position, it kicked off a race to the bottom. Now it’s commonplace for the league’s worst teams to trade their useful veterans and tank as hard as possible. 

This season Phoenix started dumping expensive veterans before Christmas, even the ones they had signed in July. What does that mean for a young player who arrives in that situation? It’s like buying a powerful new engine for your car -– after replacing the tires, brakes, and stereo with the cheapest parts available -– and expecting it to drive perfectly. 

The high pick raises expectations, but often the infrastructure isn’t there, nor is the overwhelming talent of a No. 1 pick. Teams get impatient, perhaps forgetting that up until very recently, they were trying to lose. They fire coaches who fail to win, further destabilizing the young player’s situation. 

One reason it took Oladipo’s talent a while to emerge is that he had three different coaches in his three years in Orlando. Kidd-Gilchrist’s first coach was fired after his rookie year, and Ball and Ingram’s boss just quit in a news conference before the team’s last game. 

And as Bill James, the famous baseball sabremetrician once noted, bad organizations tend to blame their best players, so a natural scapegoat is the stud player they picked at No. 2.  Look at the teams most likely to pick second this season. Cleveland, Phoenix and New York have equal odds of getting the second pick. 

Cleveland lost LeBron a year ago, gutted its team, and finally has a new coach after weeks of searching. Phoenix is on its fourth coach in three years and hasn’t made the playoffs since President Obama’s first term. The Knicks are the Knicks, a highly dysfunctional organization led by an owner who is being sued for neglecting his job in favor of his blues band.

So while the No. 2 pick is a lottery win for the team, it might end up a curse for the player picked there. Beware, Ja Morant! Take heed, RJ Barrett! And hope against hope that a competent team like the Hawks gets lucky Tuesday. But not too lucky.