The Chicago Bulls passed on Mobley, Lewis to draft a player cooked by MJ

The well known story of the Chicago Bulls former first round 1998 pick Corey Benjamin getting toasted by Michael Jordan 1v1 brings back mixed feelings.

In the 1998 NBA Draft, the Chicago Bulls would select a former Oregon State Beaver late in the first round, 28th overall. That 1998 first round draft pick of the Bulls was shooting guard Corey Benjamin, who never made much of an actual impact on the floor. Actually, what Benjamin is most famous for over the course of his rather short NBA career was getting burned by the Bulls all-time great shooting guard Michael Jordan in 1999.

The year after MJ retired, he wound up facing Benjamin in a one-on-one game at practice. That backyard style game between Jordan and Benjamin because the latter apparently told a teammate of his, Randy Brown, that he could beat the GOAT one-on-one.

Oh was he wrong about that.

I wrote up a brief look back piece on MJ’s 57th birthday last month on how he toasted Benjamin in a Bulls practice shortly after Benjamin told Brown that he could beat Jordan. This is one of those moments that truly highlights the extreme competitiveness and greatness of MJ.

Feb. 17 was MJ’s birthday and that can bring about a lot of memories about how good the Bulls were when he was leading the way. And it can bring about memories of how bad the Bulls were for a while after his second retirement from the team. That was until the infamous “Baby Bulls” took over in the mid 2000’s and carried this franchise at least to the brink of playoff contention through the end of the Derrick Rose-era in the Windy City.

However, the Bulls definitely missed on an opportunity to bridge the gap between when the Baby Bulls arrived and after MJ’s second retirement. The initial first round NBA Draft pick for the Bulls post-MJ retirement was Benjamin. He didn’t make much of an impact at any point in his NBA career. But there were some other gem finds in the 1998 NBA Draft that the Bulls missed on.

The most notable players selected after Benjamin included Nazr Mohammed (29th overall to the Utah Jazz), Rashard Lewis (32nd overall to the Seattle SuperSonics), and Cuttino Mobley (41st overall to the Houston Rockets). All three of those players at least played in one All-Star Game, won an NBA Title, or played in over 1,000 games. In Lewis’ case, he was able to do all three.

Meanwhile, the Bulls landed a player in Benjamin that didn’t even play in 150 regular season games with the team and played in under four seasons in the NBA in his short career. Benjamin averaged 5.5 points per game, 1.7 rebounds, and 0.9 assists, while shooting 39.0 percent from the field and 28.9 percent from beyond the arc. He actually finished his NBA career with a player efficiency rating of 8.9 and a number of win shares below zero.

Benjamin split his NBA career between 144 games with the Bulls and a single-digit number of games played with the Atlanta Hawks. His last season with the Bulls came in 2000-01, just slightly over two years after the team drafted him in the first round. That was the season in which the Bulls had almost half of their rosters as rookies, including point guard Jamal Crawford and and power forward Marcus Fizer.

Forward then known as Ron Artest and center Elton Brand were just breaking into the NBA too as second year big men. This was a Bulls team that had some talent, but they did miss on an opportunity to bridge the gap between the end of the dynasty years and the rebuild heading into the new century.

There were two other former NBA stars that enjoyed fruitful careers that were at least a decade long each that the Bulls could’ve drafted to fill the same rotational need. Mobley enjoyed six good seasons with the Rockets and four even more stellar seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers. He is now joined in the BIG3 by Lewis, who is an NBA Champion and two-time All-Star selection.