Ranking the Last 10 Pacer Drafts
By Jared Wade
#8. 2004 NBA Draft
- Selected David Harrison (#29)
- Selected Rashad Wright (#59)
This draft was a bit of a precursor to the Shawne Williams selection two years later.
Of course, with the 29th pick, we´re talking about a crap shoot. Few guys selected so late have ever amounted to anything. So there were no expectations for the Pacers to come away with a contributor.
But they almost did.
David Harrison, out of Colorado, was a very talented, athletic, hulking big man who looked like he might have the potential to play next to Jermaine O´Neal and keep JO from taking so many licks on the block. He had a nice post game and some impressive touch for a guy his size.
He was a bit of a homeless man´s Andrew Bynum.
He never was able to put it all together, however, with abilities that could never overcome his propensity to foul.
Also, he liked smoking weed a lot.
He got wrangled by the league´s drug narcs and was suspended for his pasttime. He was later outspoken on the issue, wondering why the NBA was meddling around with something as harmless as marijuana.
He makes some fine points.
And on a different franchise in a different era, having a pot-enjoying reserve wouldn´t have made a blip. But this was the post-Brawl Pacers where everything was magnified.
Harrison just became viewed as part of the problem.
Then again, he also starred in my favorite local player commercial of all time, a Kinetico Water spot in which he actually looks high as he runs into a wall during a take that it was apparently not in the budget to re-shoot. So it´s hard to not at least look back fondly on his time in gold and blue.