Atlanta Hawks: 4 worst draft picks the team has ever made

2. Josh Childress

The Atlanta Hawks selected Josh Childress, another player out of Stanford, with the 6th overall pick in the 2004 NBA Draft. Childress was a 6’8 small forward who was drafted for his raw talent, however, he was never able to develop that talent into anything substantive.

Childress ended up playing in eight NBA seasons. His first and best four seasons all came with the Atlanta Hawks. During those four seasons, he averaged 11.1 points and 5.6 rebounds per game on  .522/.360/.799 shooting splits. These are honestly solid numbers that would warrant a decent NBA career today, but considering he was selected sixth overall, it wasn’t nearly good enough.

Despite Childress’ decent numbers for the Hawks, the pick is made even worse by looking at some of the other players taken in that draft. Most notably, the pick directly after Childress was Luol Deng who turned out to be a multiple-time All-Star. And at pick number nine was Andre Iguodala who went on to have an incredibly succesful NBA career. Another tough blow for the Hawks.

Similar to his fellow Stanford alumni Adam Keefe, Josh Childress had an amazing final season at Stanford. He averaged 15.7 points and 7.5 rebounds per game that season which is obviously why the Hawks felt comfortable taking him sixth overall.

While it wasn’t the end of the world that Josh Childress didn’t pan out, it was only compounded by an equally terrible selection just one year later.