The 10 Most Successful UW Huskies Basketball Players in the NBA/ABA

The UW Huskies have a long and proud tradition of turning out high-caliber players, many of them homegrown in the Northwest, which has become a hotbed of basketball talent over the years.

We still don’t have an NBA team to root for, but that doesn’t mean we have to forget about the sport. The UW Huskies have produced a long list of talented basketball players over the years, since even before the Lorenzo Romar era, which has turned in its share of disappointing seasons but also a bevvy of NBA players.

Instead of practicing voodoo on all of the Oklahoma City Thunder fans collectively and trying to ignore the sport of professional basketball altogether, maybe a more constructive exercise is to look through the great annals of UW Huskies basketball history to find the most successful players to make it to the NBA and ABA out of the University of Washington.

The NBA today is full of players who used to play in Montlake. Probably the most notable right now in the NBA is Isaiah Thomas of the Boston Celtics. But where does the Tacoma native rank among the great players to come out of the University of Washington over the years?

These rankings are based on each player’s professional career and a little of what they did for the Washington Huskies. The formulas I used are not perfect, nor are they comprehensive, but a few factors I used to determine success in the NBA are statistics, of course, longevity, and overall impact on the players’ professional teams. These 10 players all made substantial contributions to the UW Huskies during their collegiate careers and found success in the NBA. I’m sure some of you will disagree with these rankings, so please express your opinions in the comments section below as you go along.

Here we go!

Next: A Star out of Portland