As Dan Weiss pointed out he other night, the San Antonio Spurs are the only NBA team to draft outside the lottery for twenty-two consecutive summers, as of this June. Yet the strength of their player development has been a huge part of their success. This has been mentioned before. Here was the graphic of just some of their draft picks:
At the bottom of the graphic, Bryn Forbes is mentioned. Forbes went undrafted which makes his story all the sweeter. To that point, Matt Bonner added the names of some players who thrived in the Spurs system despite not being drafted high (or at all) by other teams and still being drawn in to San Antonio: Jonathan Simmons, who actually paid $250 to tryout for the Austin Spurs, Danny Green, a 46th pick who was waived by the Cleveland Cavaliers, an undrafted Gary Neal, Bruce Bowen who was undrafed and started by playing overseas, and Matt Bonner, himself a former 45th pick who started overseas.