Top 100 NBA Players: #51

Chris Webber

(Simmons: #72, BBR: #62)

When Chris Webber was drafted #1 overall in 1993, most people expected him to be the next superstar. He had been the best all through high school and college, and the teams he played on were winners, always finishing among the top 4 by season's end. His NBA career started out well enough, with his 17.5 points and 9.1 rebounds good enough to win him the Rookie of the Year Award, but he butted heads with his coach, Don Nelson, and was traded away to Washington, where his injury problems started and he never really reached his potential.

One thing most people don't remember about Webber was that he was a horrendous free throw shooter. In his first six seasons, his average from the line was .541, not much higher than his field goal percentage of .508. That included the 1998-99 season, in which he led the league in rebounding with 13.0 per game and averaged 20 points, yet somehow shot only .454 from the free throw line.

Webber really hit his stride once he reached Sacramento, although injuries still sidelined him for at least 10 games nearly every season. From 1999 to 2003, he was one of the top players in the league and led the Kings to the playoffs every year, where they usually met up with the Lakers and folded. Even with Los Angeles as a thorn in his side, his numbers over that span were pretty good:

Webber - 24.8 pts, 10.6 reb, 4.7 ast, 1.5 stl, 1.5 blk, .479 FG%, .704 FT%

You'll notice that he was able to do a bit of everything, from crashing the boards to finding open teammates to actually hitting his free throws. During that time the Kings made the only meaningful playoff run of Webber's career, when they lost in 7 games to Los Angeles in the Western Conference Finals in 2002. Webber's numbers during that playoff run didn't vary much from his regular season numbers, with the exception of his free throw shooting, which dipped below 60% again.

Webber may have had some nice numbers, for example his nine straight seasons of at least 20 points per game, and his teams may have won more games than they lost, but Webber had two fatal flaws. His teams could never get anywhere in the playoffs, and Webber spent a lot of time on the bench wearing street clothes. In seven different seasons he missed at least 15 games, and twice he missed more than 50. He had the talent to be one of the all-time greatest players, but he never realized his full potential.

Chris Webber and Bob McAdoo had a lot of similarities. They were both about the same size and had similar styles of play. Both won the Rookie of the Year Award and were traded multiple times during their productive years. McAdoo won two championships, but was not a big contributor to those titles. Webber gets the edge because he was able to keep himself in the mix as a star player clear through his 13th season, while McAdoo was basically done after 6. Even with the spectacular seasons early in Mac's career, he can't quite measure up to Webber historically.