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Heat's title reminds Detroit fans of what could have been

June 22nd, 2012 11:35 AM
  • Heats-title-reminds-Detroit-fans-of-what-could-have-been

  • With the NBA Draft approaching next weekend, the Detroit Pistons are trying to decide what they’re going to do with the 9th overall pick. But as LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh celebrate their title in Miami, Pistons fans can’t help but look back nine years prior and wonder.

    In June of 2003, the Pistons were coming off of a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals yet owned the second overall pick in what would end up being the best and deepest draft of the past decade thanks to a trade with Memphis for Otis Thorpe. LeBron was the obvious number one pick that would be going to Cleveland, but after that would be a bevy of top-tier talent like Wade, Bosh, and Carmelo Anthony. However, GM Joe Dumars decided to roll the dice and go with the 18-year-old seven-footer out of Serbia, Darko Milicic.

    The Pistons would go on to win the title in Darko’s rookie season (in which he played than 160 minutes all year), but we all know how his time in the Motor City turned out. Despite possessing incredible raw skills, Milicic was never able to adapt to the NBA game in three seasons with Detroit, and he was eventually dealt to Orlando in a deal that would bring back a first rounder which was used on Rodney Stuckey. Since then Milicic has gone from Orlando to Memphis to New York to Minnesota and has settled into a comfortable position as a role player, but nothing to indicate that he was once drafted ahead of a number of future NBA champions.

    Meanwhile, Wade has just celebrated his second NBA championship, Bosh his first, and Anthony is one of the best pure scorers in the NBA. With the Pistons nucleus at the time of Billups, Hamilton, Wallace, Wallace, and Prince, they would go to one more NBA Finals, followed by three straight conference final appearances, but have yet to get back to the Promised Land. There’s no telling what any one of those superstars would have been able to provide Detroit as they moved forward, but it certainly couldn’t have been much worse than the Darko Milicic disaster.

    —”Craig Lowell“:http://thefanhub.com/writers/bio/57/Craig-Lowell

    Darko Miliic was taken with the second overall pick in 2003 behind LeBron James and ahead of Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade.

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