ESPN.com - NBA - Detroit deals Darko, Arroyo for Magic's Cato
During practices and workouts, Milicic often looked impressive scoring on an array of low-post moves, mid-range jumpers and 3-pointers. His skills rarely carried over into games.
yes, hence the trade. Is Chad Ford going to be fired now?
Update 2/17/06 - Bill Simmons adds:
Another Darko defense, this time from our own Chad Ford, who was Darko's biggest advocate in the summer of 2003 and now admits that “hindsight being 20-20, it's impossible to say the Pistons made the right decision when they chose the 18-year-old 7-footer from Serbia.” I'm glad he came to that conclusion. But here's the part that got me:“Darko sat. And stewed. He lived alone, one of his first mistakes. He got homesick. Started listening to the hecklers. Lost his passion for the game. By midseason of his rookie year, he spent more energy living the life of an NBA player off the court than playing the game that an NBA player is paid to play. When he did get into the game, typically only seconds before everyone went home, he looked out of place. 'Awkward' barely captures how lost the big kid looked. He tried to do too much, with too little time. Then, after a while, he just quit trying. He was awful and he knew it. The shame and embarrassment of it all, for a kid as proud as Darko, was too much to bear.”
Precisely! Precisely! This is why you don't pass up blue-chip players in a loaded draft to roll the dice with a talented foreigner who could possibly have adjustment issues playing in a new country on a good team! Why not take a sure thing? Especially when you have an immediate chance to become a title contender? That's what never made sense. Plus, Dumars waited a year too late to trade Darko -- if he was moved for bench help last year, the 2005 Pistons probably would have won the title. If he was moved for bench help this summer, the 2006 Pistons probably would have won 70-plus. Instead, he was moved for cap space and a future first-rounder in 2007. In other words, through 2007, this current Pistons team will have had a four-year window in which it's been (A) exceptionally healthy, and (B) one of the best two or three teams in basketball each year, and somehow, it didn't get any help from the No. 2 selection of the most loaded draft of the decade (which happened at the start of that four-year window). I would say that's a complete disaster.
Tags: Pistons
