These 10 modern-day players’ primes were squandered by inept teams

Mike Trout is the tree that falls in the forest every September. He might as well exist in the cold, vacuum of space. If there’s any evidence that sports are raw and unscripted, it’s Trout’s annual storyline. His slow fade from public consciousness as the playoffs creep closer is in stark contrast to the growing spotlight on his peers who are consistently vying for playoff glory. He’s arguably the most complete hitter in MLB when healthy and its ideal corporate star. He checks all the bases except for his perennially bottom-feeding franchise.

Ohtani is experiencing a degree of that September irrelevance while Judge’s pursuit of Roger Maris’ single season AL-record (and the Triple Crown) has squeezed the two-way star out of the AL MVP conversation. However, he has an escape hatch in his contract after the 2023 season. Now 31, Trout is nearing the end of his baseball prime on a club whose playoff aspirations typically fizzle out in mid-April. This is Mount Rushmore for players whose best years were wasted.

Megatron’s prime began during his second season in Detroit when he recorded his first 1,300-yard season. In a preview of what was to come, the Lions still went winless that season. Johnson did benefit from the Lions drafting Matt Stafford No. 1 overall. With Stafford under center, Johnson rewrote team and NFL record books. Unfortunately, their dynamic offensive connection didn’t translate to victories. Stafford and Johnson reached the postseason twice and never advanced into the Divisional Round. In 2015, Johnson retired at the age of 30 after the organization refused to release him or trade him to a contender. To further thank him for his nine years of service with their pitiful organization, the Lions forced Johnson to repay $1.6 million of his signing bonus. At least he was enshrined in Canton!

Since 2012, Trout has the highest slugging percentage of any hitter to play at least 500 games, the third-best batting average and he’s walked more than any other player. He’s hit the third-most home runs since his rookie year in 2011, which is remarkable considering first-place Nelson Cruz has played 200 games more since then, and was caught juicing in the Biogenesis scandal. Since 2012, Cruz has smacked nine more dingers than Trout in 104 more games. But, he’s only been to the playoffs once in 11 seasons. Cruz, who hit more home runs than any player of the last decade, has been to a pair of World Series. Trout has played in only one postseason series, a sweep at the hands of the Royals in the 2014 ALDS, and is the reigning poster boy for wasted primes. The worst part is that he doesn’t seem content to play out his career in purgatory.

There’s an alternate universe in which T-Mac, Grant Hill, and Tim Duncan become the Eastern Conference foil to the Shaq-Kobe Lakers. The storylines are so easy, they write themselves. Unfortunately, Hill’s foot injuries and Doc Rivers’ stubbornness regarding players’ families hitching a ride on team flights conspired to force T-Mac to play his best years hoisting a single franchise on his back. Even then, he still managed to give Kobe a run for his money.

He found a second chance at being Kobe’s equal in Houston where he paired with Yao Ming, whose career was then cut short by foot injuries. Eventually, T-Mac’s prime was cut down by leg injuries and a microfracture surgery that largely sapped him of his quick burst and ability to finish at the rim.

The tragedy of ‘Nique is that he was the ideal 1980s shooting guard. For 10 consecutive seasons, Wilkins averaged 25 points per game and won the last scoring title before Jordan made it his permanent honor for the next decade. Wilkins’ powerful frame and zero-gravity vertical leap had the Hawks drifting above sea level for years. But they were never contenders.

The furthest Nique’s Hawks ever made it were the semifinals in 1987 and ‘88. The best Hawks team he played for was the team, which won 57 games in the MJ-deprived East. Unfortunately, the 33-year-old ‘Nique was traded at the trade deadline to the Clippers for Danny Manning while Atlanta was tied atop the East with the Knicks and Bulls. In addition to wasting Wilkins’ prime, they also threw him over the edge for a younger model at their apex instead of allowing him to make a run in a wide-open postseason scrum.

Carmelo Anthony’s early prime was promising. Melo was the rare freshman to successfully lift a program to a national title and immediately paid dividends. He ended a playoff drought that lasted nearly a decade and reached the postseason every year he was in Denver. The snag is that he rarely exited the first round.

A trip to the Conference Finals after trading Allen Iverson for Chauncey Billups signified they had an upward trajectory. However, Melo had his eyes set on New York. His wish was granted at the 2011 trade deadline, but at the expense of the Knicks’ supporting cast. In six seasons with the Knicks, he made the postseason twice and only advanced as far as the conference semifinals in 2013 before getting traded to Oklahoma City in 2017. Since then, Anthony has been a basketball vagabond hitchhiking in the backseat of playoff-bound squads.

Ichiro won a championship in Japan’s top professional league at the tender age of 22, but barely sniffed the postseason after being shipped to Seattle. His career started auspiciously enough. Ichiro came to Seattle from Japan in 2001 as a 27-year-old international superstar with the smoothest swing of the early 21st century. In his first season with the Mariners, Ichiro was the central cog on a team that won an MLB-record 116 games. That fortuitous start to his MLB career was a mirage. Individually, Ichiro produced seven consecutive AL batting titles, a Major League record 10 consecutive 200-hit seasons, and the single-season hits record, but wouldn’t partake in postseason festivities again until 2012 after he was traded to the Yankees as he encroached upon 40.

The only active player on our list is Washington Wizards frontman Bradley Beal means we have to do some forecasting, but the outlook is bleak. Beal has played in a few postseason series with John Wall, but he’s actively giving away his prime by signing a long-term deal with a franchise that is too good with him on the roster to tank for a high draft pick, hasn’t been savvy at mining gems outside the lottery, whiffed on their young rooks and is currently banking on the injury-prone Kristaps Porzingis to lead them out of the dregs. Before he inked an extension this offseason, a part of Beal had to have Andre 3000’s International Playa’s Anthem verse on repeat. “Don’t do it, reconsider, read some literature on the subject.” He didn’t listen. His $251 million supermax extension will ease the pain of languishing in D.C. for the next half-decade, but it won’t do much for the fans.

Joe Thomas was drafted at the height of the Cleveland Browns’ gilded age. Of course, for Cleveland, its apex was a 10-6 season during Thomas’ rookie year. Unfortunately, Cleveland regressed and somehow found ways to continually sink further. The Browns accumulated a 38-122 record over the next decade of Thomas’ career, culminating in an 0-16 campaign in his final season. A torn triceps placed Thomas on the injured reserve in his final season, but not before he’d played an astonishing 10,363 consecutive snaps in the trenches. The downside was he’d been the blindside bulwark protecting 21 different quarterbacks from ravenous pass rushes. After walking away, Thomas shed over 100 pounds. Presumably, half of that was stress weight from playing 11 seasons with the Browns.

Barry Sanders’ deserved better. Much better. The tailback GOAT of the post-merger NFL couldn’t deliver championships to his city like his peers Walter Payton, Jim Brown, and Emmitt Smith because he was saddled with a destitute franchise. During the 10 years he toted the rock in Detroit, the Lions earned a single playoff victory in 1991 when they advanced to the Conference Championship Game. Unfortunately, he never played with an equally yoked quarterback. The Lions drafted Andre Ware first overall the year after drafting Sanders, Ware immolated so quickly, the Lions turned to Eric Kramer by 1992, then spent the next few seasons bouncing between Kramer, Rodney Peete, Scott Mitchell, and Dave Krieg. Worn down by the futility, Sanders walked away from football as a healthy 30-year-old back. At the time Sanders hung up his Lions jersey, he was sitting 1,500 yards from the career rushing record.

You can’t examine wasted primes without mentioning the plight of Ernie Banks. He’s not just Mr. Cub because of his individual accolades. He was also present for the bleakest era in the post- Billy Goat Curse period. No Cubs great suffered more than Ernie Banks. He was the first black Cubs major leaguer, a two-time NL MVP, and retired as the shortstop home run king, but his career spanned the first half of the Cubs’ four-decade-long gap between postseasons. Banks holds the major league record for most games played without a postseason appearance, but came close in 1969 when a black cat, fate, and the Amazin’ Mets colluded to sink their NL East lead