Spurs ultimate draft nightmare is one that rarely gets brought up

The San Antonio Spurs are being praised for their recent draft picks, including the last two Rookie of the Year winners. What is not discussed very often is just how horribly they botched their 2021 NBA Draft pick, turning a lottery pick into a draft bust when All-Star talent was there for the taking.

San Antonio has a legacy of maximizing its draft picks, but in 2021 they may have reached the true depths of despair. A loaded draft class saw a number of future stars go in the top few picks, from Cade Cunningham and Evan Mobley to Scottie Barnes and Franz Wagner.

The Spurs were holding the 12th pick in the draft and were in the midst of tearing down into a true rebuild. Any player at any position was on the board as a potential option. Names such as Jalen Johnson, Corey Kispert and Keon Johnson were frequently mocked to the Spurs.

When they came on the clock the Spurs proceeded to shock everyone, drafting Alabama guard Josh Primo. He was a player few had as a first round prospect and no one had in the lottery. The Spurs saw a player they liked and they reached for him.

That faith was entirely unfounded. Primo was terrible from the jump, which perhaps is to be expected for a rookie but was a unique flavor of truly awful. Nearly everything that he did on a basketball court helped the other team to win. He wasn't ready for the stage, the camera, the moment - none of it.

To make matters worse, Primo then proceeded to be accused of exposing himself to several women in the Spurs' facility. Their draft bust turned into a radioactive bomb, and they quickly moved on from him, waiving him outright as the news was made public.

That made Primo eligible to sign elsewhere, but he never found a true home and appears to be out of the league. It was a complete and utter waste of a pick. What's more, the players still on the board and ready to go next would have been far, far better selections and jumpstarted the Spurs' rebuild.

The Spurs missed on a number of stars

It is easy to draw up draft misses like bogeyman hiding in the closet that teams never saw. Yes, every team that passed on Nikola Jokic in the 2014 NBA Draft technically missed out, but no one was talking about him as a possibility throughout the first round -- and even the Denver Nuggets drafted Jusuf Nurkic and Gary Harris before Jokic. The three-time MVP exploding into superstardom was largely unforeseen.

What is a more realistic chastisement is when a team passes on players who were legitimate candidates to be drafted in their draft slot. That is certainly what happened to the Spurs in 2021. Here is a list of players who went in the next seven picks who have established themselves as legitimate NBA starters: Corey Kispert, Moses Moody, Trey Murphy III, Jalen Johnson and Alperen Sengun.

Just four years in, that group includes an All-Star center in Sengun, a pair of two-way forwards with All-Star potential in Johnson and Murphy, and two 3-and-D wings making mid-level money in Moody and Kispert. All of those players could have realistically been Spurs, but instead they took their pick and lit it on fire.

This is not revisionist history. When NBA Draft expert Sam Vecenie published his 2021 Mock Draft a week before the Draft, he mocked Duke forward Jalen Johnson to the Spurs. In fact, NBA.com detailed the players most commonly mocked at each slot, and Johnson was the Spurs' pick. Most experts thought the Spurs would be taking Johnson.

He would have been an amazing fit next to Victor Wembanyama, a capable second banana on a good team. Last season he averaged 19 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and 2.6 stocks per game. Primo? He was out of the league entirely.

The Spurs have had excellent draft luck the last three years, moving up into position to draft some excellent prospects. Wembanyama may be the best player in the NBA three years from now. But as they work to build a contender around him, they do so knowing they could have added such a player already.

Instead, they blew it, drafting the worst pick of the entire first round at pick No. 12 and one of the worst lottery picks in recent memory. It's a jarring scar for a franchise with such a rich modern history.