The 2013 Redraft: What If Cleveland Took Victor Oladipo No. 1 Overall?

Buckle up, because we are firing up the DeLorean again.

This week the basketball world got a jolt when Victor Oladipo, two time All-Star, one time human highlight reel, published an open letter in the Players' Tribune basically begging any front office willing to listen for one more chance. Heavy stuff, sure, but it also got the whole internet doing what the internet does best, arguing about what could have been. And nothing gets a sports fan's blood pumping quite like a good old fashioned redraft, so let's take a trip back to June 2013 and ask the question that's been sitting there for over a decade like a dad joke waiting for its moment.

What if Cleveland, sitting on the number one pick, had skipped Anthony Bennett entirely and taken the human pogo stick out of Indiana instead?

Bennett, for the youngsters reading this, remains the answer to one of the great "wait, really?" trivia questions in league history. Weight issues, shoulder surgery, a jump shot that showed up about as often as a total solar eclipse, out of the league within three years. Meanwhile Oladipo was sitting right there, Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, athletic enough to windmill over grown men, ready made to guard either backcourt spot from day one. Somebody in Cleveland's draft room clearly needed better coffee that morning.

So grab some popcorn. We reran the whole first round through the time machine, and the ripple effects go a lot further than just one point guard's career arc.

Here's how our 2013 redraft board shakes out with the benefit of hindsight:

Pick 1: Victor Oladipo to the Cleveland Cavaliers

Let's start with the man of the hour.

In the world we actually live in, rookie Oladipo landed in Orlando on a roster that had all the structure of a group project where nobody did the reading. He was 21, being asked to run point on a tanking team with zero veteran guidance, and it showed, 13.8 points a game on a rough 41.5 percent shooting, way too many turnovers, a guy figuring out how to be a superstar with absolutely no training wheels. It took him four years and two more zip codes before the breakout finally arrived in Indiana, where in 2017-18 he exploded for 23.1 points a night, led the league in steals, made his first All-Star team, snagged an All-Defensive nod and Most Improved Player in the same season. A star, just a very delayed one.

If you need a reminder of what peak Oladipo actually looked like, this should do it:

Now flip the jersey. Cleveland already has Kyrie Irving running the show, a bucket getter who was never exactly begging to guard the other team's best perimeter player. Drop rookie Oladipo into that backcourt and you are not asking him to be the engine, you are asking him to be the seatbelt, chase down shooters, attack closeouts, let Kyrie cook. That is a dramatically friendlier version of year one than the one he actually got, and it is not hard to squint and see an All-Star nod arriving by 2015 or 2016 instead of 2018.

Now, the part we cannot dress up in confetti. Oladipo's actual career has been a genuinely brutal run of bad injury luck, a fractured orbital bone in 2015, a fractured kneecap in 2017, a ruptured quad tendon in January 2019 that took a real chunk of his explosiveness with it, and a torn patellar tendon in the 2023 playoffs that has kept him out of the league since. That is not one unlucky bounce, that is a pattern, an explosive first step and hard landings, over and over, for a decade. A softer role in Cleveland almost certainly buys him a stronger, earlier peak. It is a lot harder to argue it rewrites his body's whole story. Some engines are just built to run hot.

Still, an earlier peak and a couple of extra healthy seasons is nothing to sneeze at. Let's see what that does to everybody else's night.

Pick 2: Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Orlando Magic

Picture the draft room. Orlando's scouting staff has just put on grainy tape of an 18 year old string bean playing against grown men in the Greek second division, all elbows and ankles, looking like he borrowed someone else's arms.

"He's gonna eat everybody alive in three years," says the scout in the corner, practically vibrating.

"He's gonna get eaten alive in week one," mutters someone from the analytics desk.

The GM leans back. "Boys, we've spent five straight years handing out lottery picks like Halloween candy and getting nothing but empty calories for it. Fultz, Isaac, Bamba, sound familiar? Let's actually be patient with one of these for once."

And that, folks, is the whole ballgame. The real Giannis fell all the way to 15, to Milwaukee, and turned into a two time MVP, a Defensive Player of the Year, and a 2021 champion, on a franchise that had the good sense to just leave him alone and let him grow into his own limbs. Give Orlando that same patience a full decade earlier than Paolo Banchero finally arrived, and the timeline of the entire franchise reroutes itself.

In case you need convincing that the wait would have been worth it:

Pick 3: Rudy Gobert to the Washington Wizards

In real life the Wizards took Otto Porter here, a perfectly nice glue guy, while Gobert fell all the way to 27 before Utah scooped him up on draft night like they'd found a twenty dollar bill in an old coat. Three Defensive Player of the Year awards later, that looks like an absolute heist.

Now imagine the actual scouting meeting. "He's 7'1 with a wingspan that could reach the concession stand from half court," says one voice. "He also can't shoot free throws or catch a chest pass," says another. The room goes quiet until somebody points out John Wall is about to spend the next decade getting torched on ball screens with zero rim protection behind him.

Wall and Beal spent years being an electric offense stapled to a defense that could not stop a nosebleed. A young Gobert patrolling the paint behind that backcourt pressure changes Washington's entire defensive identity, possibly the single biggest missing piece era-defining teams need and almost never get through the draft.

Pick 4: CJ McCollum to the Charlotte Bobcats

Charlotte's real pick here, Cody Zeller, never became anything close to a number one option. McCollum, meanwhile, actually landed in Portland and turned into one half of one of the more explosive scoring backcourts of the 2010s alongside Damian Lillard, routinely dropping 20 plus a night with a handle that made grown defenders trip over their own shoelaces.

Slide him in next to Kemba Walker instead and picture the shootaround chatter. "So who's bringing the ball up?" a rookie McCollum asks. "Doesn't matter," Kemba shrugs, "we're both getting buckets either way." It is not a tidy defensive pairing, two undersized combo guards rarely is, but offensively it finally gives Charlotte a second guy who can create his own shot instead of watching Kemba get triple teamed every fourth quarter for a decade.

Pick 5: Steven Adams to the Phoenix Suns

Sorry Alex Len, but this one is not close. The real Suns pick spent his career as a rotational afterthought, while Adams turned into an absolute battering ram, a screen setting, rim running, no nonsense enforcer who made Oklahoma City's Westbrook and Durant era go, and who reportedly once out muscled grown men for offensive rebounds like he was clearing furniture out of his way.

Picture the pre-draft workout. Adams walks in, sets a screen so violent it nearly relocates a coach's shoulder, then jogs to the rim, catches a lob, and does not even celebrate, just jogs back like he's done this a thousand times. The Suns front office looks at each other and one of them just says, "yeah, we're taking the big fella." Fast forward two years and picture this version of Adams still anchoring that paint when a skinny kid named Devin Booker shows up in 2015, getting absolutely walled off screens from the league's most cheerfully violent center while Len is out there getting bull rushed in someone else's uniform. Phoenix spent most of the 2010s auditioning centers like it was a reality show. Adams ends that search on day one.

Pick 6: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to the New Orleans Pelicans

In reality New Orleans drafted Nerlens Noel here and flipped him to Philadelphia for Jrue Holiday before he ever suited up for them. Caldwell-Pope, on the other hand, quietly built one of the sneakiest good resumes in this whole class, a rock solid 3 and D wing who has won two championships as a role player, first with the Lakers, then with Denver.

Imagine the Pelicans front office lunch. "We've got a generational big man in Anthony Davis," someone says between bites, "now we just need someone who can actually guard the perimeter and knock down an open three so teams stop doubling AD every time he touches it." Rookie KCP nodding along in the corner, quietly becoming exactly that guy from day one, instead of New Orleans spending years hunting for shooting and wing defense to build around their franchise cornerstone.

Pick 7: Otto Porter Jr. to the Sacramento Kings

Sacramento's actual pick, Ben McLemore, never stuck as a real rotation piece. Porter has instead made an entire career out of doing the unglamorous stuff correctly, a career 40 percent three point shooter who found championship success in Golden State's system in 2022 by simply never being the problem.

Drop him into Sacramento's early 2010s locker room, which was less a team and more a rotating cast of characters and drama, and picture the head coach practically weeping with joy. "You mean I get a guy who just, shoots open threes, plays defense, and doesn't complain about touches?" Kings fans, an entire era of chaos, might have just needed one guy who showed up and did his job quietly every single night.

Pick 8: Dennis Schroder to the Detroit Pistons

With Caldwell-Pope rerouted to New Orleans in this exercise, Detroit lands Schroder instead, a guard who has made a whole career out of getting a bucket whenever he feels like it, isolation, floater, step back, doesn't matter, and who later captained Germany to a EuroBasket title like it was a Tuesday.

Picture a Pistons front office meeting scribbled on a whiteboard that just says "point guard problem" in red marker, underlined three times, a running theme for most of the decade between the Rip Hamilton era ending and Cade Cunningham finally showing up years later. Schroder does not fully patch that hole, but a reliable scoring engine at the point for a decade beats the carousel Detroit actually rode.

Pick 9: Tim Hardaway Jr. to the Minnesota Timberwolves

Minnesota's real pick, Trey Burke, got traded to Utah before he ever played a single game in a Wolves uniform, which has to be some kind of speed record. Hardaway Jr, meanwhile, built himself a long career as an instant offense wing shooter, good enough eventually to be a key rotation piece on a team that reached the 2024 NBA Finals.

Slot him next to Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love and picture the pregame scouting report. "Rubio's gonna find you open all night," an assistant coach tells rookie Hardaway, "just catch and shoot, kid." A Wolves roster that spent years starving for perimeter shooting suddenly has a guy whose entire job description is exactly that, from day one.

Pick 10: Nerlens Noel to the Portland Trail Blazers

In real life, New Orleans took Noel here, then flipped him to Philadelphia for Jrue Holiday before he ever suited up for the Pelicans, one of the stranger draft night trades of the decade. Noel tore his ACL that same year at Kentucky and missed his entire rookie season, but once healthy he turned into exactly what his tape promised, a lanky, twitchy shot blocker who could erase mistakes at the rim even when his offense never really showed up.

That is precisely the guy Portland has been meme'd about needing for the better part of a decade. Picture the front office huddled around a whiteboard that just says "who is protecting the rim" with three question marks after it, a problem that would follow this franchise all the way through years of fans jokingly begging for literally anyone taller than 6'9 who could jump. Now picture Damian Lillard walking into a gym, watching rookie Noel swat a shot into the fifth row, and just nodding slowly. "Finally," he mutters, "somebody who can clean up after me." Noel never needed the ball to be useful, he just needed a green light to fly around and block stuff, which happens to be the exact fit next to a ball dominant scoring guard who has spent his whole career getting torched on the other end. It is not a flashy pairing, but it plugs the one hole that actually mattered.

The sliding doors ending

Now back to Cleveland, because this is where it gets fun.

In the real world, the Cavaliers spent that first season developing Anthony Bennett, who never found his footing, then used him a year later as essentially throw-in salary filler, alongside Andrew Wiggins and a future first, to land Kevin Love from Minnesota. Nobody wanted Bennett for his game, he was just the guy who made the money work.

Now picture the version of Cleveland that spent that year developing Oladipo instead. One path, the front office protects him completely, builds the Love trade around other pieces, and LeBron comes home in the summer of 2014 to a young core that already includes a two way guard who can defend both backcourt spots and space the floor, instead of manufacturing perimeter defense out of aging veterans every single postseason.

The messier, more poetic path, Minnesota gets offered an actual promising 22 year old wing instead of a throw-in nobody particularly wanted, and says yes even faster, and Oladipo's prime kicks off in Minneapolis instead of Cleveland at all.

Either way, run the tape back on the 2016 Finals, Cleveland down 3-1 to a 73 win Golden State team, and picture a healthy, All-Defensive caliber wing on that roster instead of an aging J.R. Smith trying to stay in front of Stephen Curry in space. Maybe it changes nothing. Maybe it changes everything. That is the whole fun of the sliding doors game, you never actually get to know, you just get to wonder, and wondering is basically the entire point of being a sports fan in the first place.