In the weeks leading up to last week's NBA draft, The Dagger has been counting down the list of the best college basketball players who went on to have disappointing NBA careers. (The criteria used in compiling these rankings can be read in our introductory entry.) 1e finally reach No. 1, the best college player with the worst NBA career: Ed O'Bannon from UCLA.

Most of the players on this list are remembered for either being great in college (Christian Laettner) or for being NBA busts (Pervis Ellison). Then there's Ed O'Bannon. He's just not remembered much at all.

It's a shame because when he was good, O'Bannon was great. He won national player of the year honors in 1995, led UCLA to its first title since the John Wooden era (scoring 30 points and grabbing 17 boards in the NCAA championship game) and was considered a "complete" player that would shine in the NBA.

It never happened, as the injury that almost prevented O'Bannon from becoming a college star became the one that derailed his professional career.

After being the most highly-touted prep recruit in the land (in the same high school class as Penny Hardaway and Grant Hill, no less), O'Bannon committed to UNLV but signed with UCLA after the Runnin' Rebels were put on probation. Six days before O'Bannon would have his first practice at the school, he tore up his knee so badly that his doctor said it looked like he had been in an explosion.

Four years and a few cadaver ligaments later, O'Bannon scored 30 points and grabbed 17 boards in UCLA's first national championship victory since John Wooden retired. O'Bannon was the guy who led the Bruins back to the promised land. And it was expected that he would do the same to whichever team took him in the 1995 NBA draft.

When O'Bannon unexpectedly fell to the New Jersey Nets at the No. 9 pick in that draft, it caused Newsday's Neil Best to write:

The news was a bolt out of the blue, one of those rare moments when the Nets could allow themselves to believe their bad luck might not last forever.

Oh, there was bad luck, but it lasted for two years, not forever. That's how long O'Bannon stuck around the NBA before retiring and bouncing around Europe for a couple of seasons. He left the game for good at 30 and now the man who was once the greatest basketball player in the land and is forever one of the biggest draft busts is selling cars at a dealership in Nevada.

But that doesn't make Ed O'Bannon a failure, just a guy who could never duplicate his collegiate success on the professional level.

This list wasn't about mocking great college players who failed in the NBA, it was about celebrating great college players whose basketball reputations took a hit when they couldn't hack it in the pros. That's always seemed unfair to me.

Is Al Pacino's performance in "The Godfather" any worse because he was in "S1mone"?  Does the awfulness of the new Rolling Stones albums take away from the greatness of "Beggars Banquet"? Of course not. So why should Ed O'Bannon only scoring 684 points in the NBA negate what he did in college?

To true college basketball fans, it doesn't. The Ed O'Bannons and Christian Laettners and Calbert Cheaneys were great during their NCAA basketball heydays and that's the way I choose to remember them. What happens in the NBA should be completely separate from that. Too often, it isn't.

I wish the players in the 2009 NBA draft the best of luck with their futures but, to me, whatever they do in the pros doesn't matter in regard to the way they should be remembered by college fans. Whether Tyler Hansbrough is a 10-time All-Star or out of the league by age 27, it won't enhance or diminish the fact that he was one of the best to ever play college basketball.

NCAA Riches to NBA Rags countdown:

No. 2 -- Christian Laettner

No. 3 -- Pervis Ellison

No. 4 -- Calbert Cheaney

No. 5 -- Lionel Simmons

No. 6 -- Juan Dixon

No. 7 -- Billy Owens

No. 8 -- J.R. Reid

No. 9 -- Adam Morrison

No. 10 -- Danny Ferry