Our latest “What if” — an occasional series on the great “might-have-beens” of District sports — looks at one of the latter: What if the Wizards had drafted Pau Gasol instead of Kwame Brown in 2001.
Pau Gasol didn’t stand a chance. When the Washington Wizards had the first overall selection in the 2001 NBA draft, Michael Jordan was the president of basketball operations, and the legend and his staff were so infatuated with 19-year-old center Kwame Brown that they paid scant attention to the Spaniard who would eventually become a six-time All-Star and two-time NBA champion.