The rookies I remember having immense hype, the kind where the draft is considered a sweepstakes for who will get them:
Shaquille O’Neal (1992) Tim Duncan (1997) LeBron James (2003) Zion Williamson (2019) Victor Wembanyama (2023)
Three out of four have had top 10-15 all time careers. I hope Zion gets it together to have at least a Hall of Fame career.
Who am I forgetting / who was there before 1992?
I feel like that’s just a prisoner of the moment thing. By adding the words truly immense you have created a scenario where you can’t be wrong. Any rookie that didn’t live up to the hype just didn’t have truly immense levels of it. What about Kwame brown? Deandre ayton? Greg oden? The three ball Brothers? So many players have had a lot of hype before they played. But again the words truly immense and mostly make your statement completely correct regardless of the amount of examples I can give.