It's Darko's Day

Darko Milicic came to the league at the wrong time.

It’s not very often that the first ten picks in a given NBA draft turn out as talented as the class of 2003 did. Four of the first five picks will be all stars for the next ten years and two (Lebron James and Dwyane Wade) are on the way to be among the greatest of all time.

Then there’s Darko. Milicic has been labeled as one of the biggest busts in the history of the draft, basketball’s equivalent to Ryan Leaf.

The problem is that Milicic has yet to get into a real game. His poor statistics come from the few minutes he was given during garbage time. How can you be a bust when you’ve never been given to the chance to thrive?

That all changes tonight when Milicic makes his debut with the Orlando Magic, the team that traded for him after Detroit gave up with the experiment. Milicic will not start for the time being but will see a major increase in his minutes and will at least have the opportunity to prove that he is a talented player.

It’s hard to say that Darko will either excel or falter because no one really knows anything about him. Scouting reports all raved about him before he was drafted but he ran into a bad situation. He had to deal with Larry Brown, a coach who doesn’t like young players and a championship bound team that already had all of its pieces in place.

It should be interesting to see what comes of Darko’s time with the Magic. At best, he and Dwight Howard could combine to form one of the elite frontcourts in the game. At worst, the Magic traded away a weak player in Kevin Cato and a draft pick they probably would have messed up anyway (see Fran Vazquez and Reece Gaines).