How The Detroit Pistons Ended Up Drafting Darko Miličić

The Pistons made one of the worst NBA draft picks of all-time in 2003, but won the championship anyways. What does Darko's story teach us about NBA team-building?

Nov 23, 2020

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On June 26, 2003, Lebron James strode across the NBA Draft stage and shook David Stern’s hand as the number one overall pick. Dressed in all-white, Lebron looked like the NBA’s savior. He has been just that over the past two decades and will make it to the Basketball Hall of Fame along with three of the next four selections in the draft (Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade). Yet, the tall, lanky Serbian taken right after Lebron never made an impact on the court. Darko Miličić washed out of the NBA by 29, despite starting his career on a championship team.

The Detroit Pistons’ selection of Miličić gives rise to a few questions. First, how did the Pistons, which won 50 games and reached the Eastern Conference Finals the year before, end up with the 2nd overall pick in the greatest draft of all time? Why did they select an 18-year old Serbian over some of the most celebrated draftees ever? Finally, did the whole Darko saga even matter? What we find in this story is front office hubris leading to two terrible decisions.

The road to Darko began with former All-Star Otis Thorpe getting traded in 1997

Thorpe was a solid starting power forward for Houston when they went to two straight finals. Then, the Rockets traded Hakeem Olajuwon’s frontcourt running mate to Portland for Clyde Drexler in 1994. After a half-season with the Blazers, Detroit gave up a first-round pick for Thorpe to bring leadership to Doug Collins’s rebuilding Pistons.

Before the 1996 season, Detroit doubled down on the trade by giving Thorpe a 3-year, $17.1 million contract. He played well for Detroit and the team improved. But before the 1997 season, Thorpe requested a trade after butting heads with the coaching staff. The Pistons happily obliged the request to free cap space, and found a willing suitor in the Vancouver Grizzlies. Vancouver wanted Thorpe to help their floundering franchise and create a strong frontcourt with Bryant “Big Country” Reeves and Shareef Abdul-Rahim. The Pistons got a pick that would land between the second and 18th picks of the next six years (1998-2003).

The Vancouver/Memphis franchise self-inflicted one of the greatest wounds in NBA history.

A lot of people talk about the pick that Memphis gave up for Thorpe with today’s vocabulary of protected draft picks, which convey when a pick falls into a certain range. However, the term for future NBA draft picks traded with strings attached in 1997 was a “conditional draft pick.” The key difference between those two terms is that the team sending the pick still maintained some control over it. In this case, the pick had to fall between the 2nd and 18th picks of the draft AND the Grizzlies had to decide to convey it to Detroit on or before June 1st of each year.

Thorpe didn’t work out in Vancouver as the team languished at the bottom of the league. He was traded to Sacramento for Bobby Hurley and Michael Smith after 48 games. Because the Grizzlies remained terrible, the franchise decided to keep the pick every season before the obligation came due in 2003. They selected some talented players like Mike Bibby (2nd in 1998), Steve Francis (2nd in 1999, traded to Houston), Shane Battier (6th in 2001), and Drew Gooden (4th in 2002). The 2000 draft will come up later, but the decisions to keep these picks aren’t bad in a vacuum.

The situation created one of the most gut-wrenching moments in NBA history at the 2003 NBA Draft Lottery. If the Grizzlies’ pick ended up at #1, the protection would kick in and they would keep the pick. If not, Memphis would be forced to fulfill the obligation and send the pick to Detroit. New Grizzlies GM Jerry West could only watch in horror as the team lost one of the greatest picks in NBA history.

Detroit then wasted a golden opportunity

While it sounds crazy now, the NBA community LOVED Darko Miličić heading into the 2003 NBA Draft. This article from Detroit Bad Boys does a great job of chronicling the Darko hyperbole. The most insane comment comes from a Pistons scout comparing Darko to WILT FUCKING CHAMBERLAIN:

Robinson’s comment didn’t seem insane to people at the time. Darko was universally pegged as a top-five pick and a lock at #2 for the Pistons by the time of the draft. The rest of the draft had plenty of question marks as well. Toronto tried to trade down because they weren’t completely sold on Chris Bosh. Miami surprised many by reaching for Dwyane Wade at 5. Detroit didn’t necessarily fail in terms of their evaluation, at least not more than the rest of the NBA. Draft picks just don’t work out sometimes.

Both the Pistons and the Grizzlies screwed up due to front office hubris

The Pistons took Darko because they believed that they could shepherd his potential while also competing for a title. Carmelo Anthony made so much sense for Detroit at two. Anthony clearly showed his NBA-readiness in one of the greatest college basketball seasons of all time. He also filled an immediate need as a wing scorer with Clifford Robinson aging, and new Head Coach Larry Brown preferred Anthony or Bosh.

None of that stopped Detroit General Manager Joe Dumars from taking Darko. He saw the Serbian’s limitless ceiling and did what most teams do at the top of the draft: take the most talented guy.

Dumars was not only overconfident in the team’s ability to groom Darko, but also in the team’s evaluation of him. In 2012, Dumars admitted that “we may have had two sources of information [on Darko]” before drafting him. The main source of information on Darko was a couple of workouts and scouting reports on his play in Serbia. They decided an 18-year old Serbian was the next Wilt Chamberlain based on seeing him in an empty gym. The Pistons had college tape, workouts and reports from coaches on the other potential selections. Dumars simply overvalued the tiny amount of information on Darko.
Similarly, the Grizzlies were overconfident in their team’s development and future. The front office obviously made a huge mistake in trading for Otis Thorpe in the first place because they thought the team would improve substantially. But, they compounded the error by continuing to keep the pick when the monster 2003 draft was brewing.

While the franchise’s decisions were understandable, the Vancouver/Memphis Grizzlies should have fulfilled the trade obligation in 2000. That year’s draft was incredibly weak and teams knew it at the time. Grizzlies president of basketball operations Dick Versace said "[i]t's not a draft where it goes five-deep or nine-deep or six-deep or 10-deep [...] this draft in terms of sure bets went one deep."

The team knew it did not get the first overall selection by June 1st. But, they still decided to stay in a weak draft despite considering all of their options with the pick. They took Stromile Swift, who was merely pedestrian in his NBA career. With a little bit of foresight and humility, the franchise could have passed on the weak draft in favor of the 2003 draft that was taking shape by then. The Grizzlies simply believed in their ability to win and develop raw talent with little evidence of being able to do either.

The story has a happy ending for both teams though. Just not for Darko.

The Pistons won the title with Darko Miličić in 2003. Of course, Darko did nothing to help. He scored just 48 points over a total of 158 minutes during the regular season. Detroit pulled a trade deadline deal to bring Rasheed Wallace to put them over the top. There’s a sound argument that the team would not have won the title if they drafted Carmelo Anthony.

The Grizzlies would have been better off with Carmelo or DWade or Chris Bosh instead of Stromile Swift or 48 games of Otis Thorpe. However, Jerry West built a playoff team around Shane Battier, Pau Gasol and Mike Miller before falling off and trading Gasol in 2008. By 2010, the franchise actually ended up in a better spot than the Nuggets (who drafted Anthony) or the Raptors (who drafted Bosh).

The real loser here is Darko. The NBA will always imagine the 2003 NBA Draft “what if” in terms of team success. But, Darko had a much better chance at success if Memphis made the second pick in the 2003 draft rather than Detroit.

The lesson for NBA teams from this story is to know your team’s expectations and don’t believe too much in yourself. Darko’s story is one of the NBA’s many stories of front office hubris. Teams consistently believe they can short circuit the team-building process (like the Grizzlies did) or think they are the special franchise that can develop a superstar out of a mystery (like the Pistons did). However, we know that teams won’t learn this lesson and we will continue to find Darko-like stories throughout the NBA.

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