We continue our eDraft exclusive look at the top NBA draft choices over the past 40 years. Our continued look back through history will determine who was the best draft selection through each slot in the draft. We don’t stop with the first overalls, we will go pick by pick, year by year to to identify the very best selections of all-time.

As is customary, we recap the previous pick before we get started; in this case the 13th overall selection happened to offer two all-time great players to choose from. In the end it was the Los Angeles Lakers Kobe Bryant who won out over Karl Malone. Kobe who has one regular season MVP Award, two finals MVP Awards, 15 All-Star nominations, four All-Star MVP Awards, two league scoring titles, nine NBA All-Defensive First Team appearances and two Olympic Gold Medals on his resume, was a fairly easy choice over ‘The Mailman’. Despite already being enshrined in the Hall of Fame, Malone lost out on this honour to the future Hall of Famer Bryant.

OK, on to our next draft slot, which is the 12th overall. We are looking to run our streak of finding current or future Hall of Famers to five in a row with this draft slot and since we are looking at lottery picks this shouldn’t be that hard.

Well unfortunately, not only are we not finding ourselves a Hall of Famer, we are actually void of any superstar or star here whatsoever. While this draft slot lacks any true star it does still offer some quality but we had to dig deep in the draft almanacs to find it. What we did find was a key player for the Boston Celtics and who played on two championship teams. Before we unveil our eventual winner, let’s take a look at some of the other notables.

We actually had to go a considerable ways back just to find a decent enough pick. 15 years to be exact and with it Austin Croshere was drafted by the Indiana Pacers in 1997. Preceding Croshere was the “Ukraine Train” Vitaly Potapenko who was taken by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 1996 draft. Going again with back-to-back years, we saw Harold “Baby Jordan” Miner go in 1992 to the Miami Heat and Greg Anthony went in 1991 to the New York Knicks.

After the whopping four players in the last 20 years, we pressed on in hopes that the 1980’s would offer more. The decade did come through with a few notables; however, we still didn’t find our winner. The 1989 draft saw Mookie Blaylock go to new Jersey, the 1987 draft had Muggsy Bogues taken by Washington; while the start of the decade had Kelly Tripucka go to Detroit in 1981 and Mike Woodson was selected by the new York Knicks in 1980.

Our eventual champion here was drafted in the 1970’s and came even early that the noteworthy Jim Paxson who went to Portland in the 1979 draft. That’s right, we are going all the way back to 1977 and it is there that we find the Boston Celtics selecting Cedric Maxwell with their 12th overall pick.

Maxwell went on to be an integral part of the Boston Celtics and once teamed with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish; the franchise reeled off two championships. In fact, Maxwell was named NBA Finals MVP of the 1981 Championship series. Maxwell retired with career averages of 12.5 ppg, 6.3 rpg and 2.2 apg and he had his #31 jersey retired to the rafters by the Boston Celtics. Given the competition and the career accomplishments; The Celtics Cedric Maxwell is eDraft’s greatest 12th overall draft pick of all-time.