Jan Veselý, We Hardly Knew Ye

This summer, after signing a deal with Fenerbache Ulker of the Turkish Basketball League, the grand Jan Veselý: NBA Player experiment has come to an end.

Selected sixth overall by the Washington Wizards in the 2011 Draft, Veselý exits the NBA with a respectable per 36 minute line—8.7 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 1.6 steals, 1.2 blocks—but having made a grand total of 29 shots more than five feet away from the basket, roughly one for every 85 minutes he was on the floor. While this lack of an outside shot is not what doomed Veselý's NBA career—plenty of players have survived a one-dimensional offensive skill-set—it's representative of a career arc filled with three years of chaotic stagnation. His allure as a draft prospect was a unique blend of size, mobility and athleticism. Three seasons later he's roughly the same player with that athleticism still channeled into a fireworks display that is as likely to singe off your eyebrows as it is to light up the night sky.

It should be noted that he probably left the NBA somewhat by choice. At just 24 years old, and still draped with plenty of sticky-sweet potential, Veselý almost certainly could have found another American home. But struggling in the spotlight can quickly leach the fun from basketball and it's hard to draw fault with his decision. Still, the ramifications are clear: by inking his name on that Turkish contract Veselý has secured his place in the NBA's prestigious Hall of Draft Busts. Although it's still under construction, he will probably ultimately find his place in the Wing of European Misfires, along with Darko Milicic, Nikoloz Tskitishvili, and Yaroslav Korolev. Veselý shares a continental geography with those three but he has a subtle quality which sets him apart—a bizarrely ironic popularity.

The lingering kiss he gave his model girlfriend on draft night gave him a certain cache as a rookie. The nickname "Air Wolf" added to it. He airballed free throws but he also dunked on people's heads. And strangely, nothing he ever did (or didn't do) in three seasons on the court really drowned him in negative perception. He was laughed at and cheered for, but never disliked. The auto-generated twitter account from StatSheet, @JanVeselyStats, became an inside joke. Every string of zeroes sent out from this account became a joyous celebration of his unintentional statistical nihilism. What set Veselý apart from other busts was the people took pleasure in his failures but simultaneously rooted for his success, and not just in a "he's on my favorite team, so I want him to make it."

Darko's brooding stare, Kwame Brown's stone-faced reply, Adam Morrison's dangerous moustache—the outward facades of these other noticeable busts helped make them seem loathsome to NBA fans. Because they appeared aloof, stand-offish, or inaccessible they all seemed more than complicit in their athletic failures, they were largely responsible—all part of some sinister master plan to rob their franchises of value and extract every ounce of disappointment from our basketball souls.

Of course we also reserve some measure of fault for the teams and general managers who selected these temptresses. We curse their greed and blinding athletic lust. We lament their lack of vision and foresight. But the Wizards get a free pass because they were not seduced, the fell in love—a condition we all understand just as fundamentally as lust, but which promotes empathy instead of squashing it. We don't fault the Wizards for loving Veselý, because we kind of love him too.

Veselý, with the gentle charisma of a Nebraska farm boy, somehow endured as a happy accident. Like Buster in Arrested Development or Chris Farley in anything, his shortcomings seemed to be somehow out of his control—a genetic curse exacerbated by circumstances unwilling to just take it easy on the guy. You laugh at the failures, because they're funny, but they aren't ridiculous enough to separate him from his humanity—a sympathetic figure remains.

The result is that Veselý walks away, leaving a different kind of legacy than those who usually wear the label of draft bust. He is not remembered as a basketball charlatan receiving an appropriate amount of shame and disgrace for trying to fool us into thinking he was better than he was. Veselý is a victim, ill-prepared for this crazy professional basketball world he got swept up in; an artist, endearingly limited in scope and chronically misunderstood in application.

So long Jan, it's been good to know you.

Follow Ian Levy on Twitter.