10 recent standout March Madness performers who flopped in NBA
Kemba Walker, Stephen Curry and Carmelo Anthony are behind some of the greatest individual March Madness runs in the history of NCAA hoops. What they displayed in their college years was a sign of things to come as they evolved into NBA stardom — the three have combined for 21 All-Star appearances and 11 All-NBA nods.
This isn't the case for every great college basketball player, however. Take Bo Kimble, for example, who joined Loyola Marymount for the 1987-88 season after spending a year at USC as a freshman. Kimble immediately erupted, scoring 22.2 points per game in his debut campaign with the Lions. A horrendous 3-21 shooting performance is how he ended his year, as the Lions lost in the second round of the 1988 NCAA Tournament to UNC.
His senior year is when he'd prove that what we saw in 1988 March Madness was a fluke. After dropping in a whopping 35.3 points per game over the course of the 1989-90 season, Kimble went off for 45, 37, 19 and 42 points in his four NCAA Tournament games that year, bringing No. 11 seed Loyola Marymount past No. 6 New Mexico State, No. 3 Michigan and No. 7 Alabama before they ultimately lost a 131-101 Elite Eight matchup with UNLV. UNLV, as it turns out, would go on to win the whole tournament.
The Clippers saw his unstoppable scoring prowess and decided to take a stab with the eighth overall pick of the 1990 NBA Draft. 105 games later, Kimble had finished his NBA career with measly averages of 5.5 points, 1.5 rebounds and 0.9 assists per game on an inefficient .386 shooting percentage from the field. His career was plagued with injuries, and the Clippers' system was not the ideal setup for an NBA hopeful bursting with talent. The story took an upsetting turn when Kimble revealed that he had suicidal thoughts while playing for the Clippers, as he felt his talent was going to waste without opportunities to prove himself on the court.
Who knows what would have happened had Kimble found his way on a better team, with a coaching staff that was more willing to give him a shot? And that's just one of the questions that we can ask about several of the players you'll find below, who set the bar very high after incredible March Madness performances before coming crashing down to mediocrity in the NBA. Injuries, bad teams, overall poor performance and other factors come into play in each case, but it doesn't change the fact that these players peaked in college and could never find that magic upon arriving to the pros.
All stats retrieved from Basketball Reference and College Basketball Reference.
