OT: Darko Milicic Signing
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=5345905
4 years...20 million....Minnesota Timberwolves...No wonder they're awful...
I still remember how terrible he was in Detroit...talk about taking a shot at a player with potential and miss-firing....
Oh the human victory cigar. I would love that title if it got me $5 mill per year after a 7 year career of sucking!
i was hoping your title was a typo and this would be his newest rap video.
when you say newest rap video it implies that he's already made one. Please can you tell me where I can find that?
He will never be truly free until he is released from these burdensome multi-million $ contracts!
If Coach K or Izzo signed as the Minnesota coach this would be the 6th best day of my life!
Well with that little teaser, now I am curious what the other 5 are. Feel free to make it a diary. I'll wait...
It's summer... I'm piskey. So, maybe?
Think of how many more titles the Pistons would've won if they had drafted Carmelo, DWade, or Bosh instead. We're talking 3-4 in a row there.
No kidding. The problem was that while D-wade looks good now, at the draft there is no way he gets taken that high. People thought Miami was reaching for him at whatever spot they took him (8-9?). Melo would have been a great choice, but, at the time (and now for that matter), Prince was the apple of Dumars eye, so he went with a position of need (big man). Now if he took Bosh we are talking multiple titles, but Bosh wasn't looked at nearly as highly as Milicic.
Darko wasn't second guessed by anybody. The one guy in one of the best drafts ever to be the ultimate flop. Hard to fathom.
Wade was drafted 5th actually so its not such an inconceivable reach. I named the players I did because if Detroit had drafted literally anybody else in that class's top-5 they would've most likely won several titles in a row.
Not disagreeing with you there. I was merely pointing out as a follow up to what you said that we would have picked Darko everytime which just sucks.
I disagree with the notion that nobody second-guessed the Darko pick at the time. I'll concede that hindsight is 20-20. However, he was 18, had only played in Serbia, and was a relative unknown. There was a fair amount of debate in the press, although most suspected he would be the pick. This was a pick based primarily on potential and "ceiling" (which is always fascinating to me). To a lesser extent, the Pistons knew they had time to develop him (i.e., they didn't need an immediate impact player) and Joe D. was concerned about chemistry issues with 'Melo.
I agree that Joe drafted a position of need, but I don't believe the pick was unquestioned at the time.
Those who said "everyone would have taken Darko" is not quiet true. There were a lot questioning the Foreign love vs. the guy who just single handedly won the NCAA title. But likewise those that say how stupid it was...it was a stupid thing half the teams in the League would have made. I remember Denver's GM was in love with him too, to the point he wasn't sure he wasn't 1A after LeBron. Ah, hindsight.
Out of the three of them, they only have one title. If the pistons would have drafted them, they would have become a superstar team that wouldn't be able to win titles. See: Cavaliers, Raptors, Nuggets, Lakers post-Shaq and pre-Kobe getting a team. The beauty of the Pistons championship run was the fact that they played as a team, we didn't have a superstar. Barring a Rasheed defensive misque, the Pistons could have won another title, maybe kept Ben, and kept dominating in the East the way they were. So, out team might have been better in the win-loss column, no doubt, but I don't think they would have been to so many conference titles.
They only have one title because the players around them are/were garbage for the most part compared to actual championship teams. Dwade is the only one to have an actual "star" on his team and between Shaq and him they won the title surrounded by role players. Toronto is a joke franchise, and on the Nuggets Kenyon Martin isn't exactly a "star" and neither is a past-his-prime Allen Iverson and Billips would've stayed on the Pistons in this scenario.
those draft picks would have meant losing one of our solid starting 5:
Draft Carmelo, you lose Tayshaun. The offense is run through Melo, and you don't get the defense or length that causes mismatches that Tay Tay brought to the table.
Draft Chris Bosh, you lose Rasheed, a 6' 11" power forward who could shoot the outside shot, had a good post game, and also played good defense against smaller power fowards.
Drafting D-Wade would have been alright, I guess. But they way they had the offense set up, Rip's mid range shooting ability meshed well the overall ability of the team. Wade is more of a driver than a jump shooter.
I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong, because I could be completly wrong and they could have gone along perfect with our team, but the draft pick we chose didn't alter our starters (which is a good and bad thing, I guess).
Carmelo and Bosh may be questionable given the starters in place at the time. However, Dwade should be an automatic plug-in to the starting lineup. Rip is good but Dwade is a tier above for sure.
With Carmelo and Bosh at the very least you get a VERY solid bench player even as a rookie -- 6-man of the year worthy -- which is a huge deal when grinding through the playoffs on a championship run (Lakers with Odom coming off the bench is the first very obvious example off the top of my head).
When you talk about Dwayne Wade being an automatic plug-in over Rip, do you mean over the long-term or during our championship season? If it is over the long-term, then I do not disagree, but for the 2003-2004 season:
Richard Hamilton - 35.5 MPG, 17.6 ppg, 4.0 assists, 3.6 rpg, 1.6 steals, 2.6 TO
Dwayne Wade - 34.9 MPG, 16.2 ppg, 4.5 assists, 4 rpg, 1.4 steals, 3.2 TO
Throw in the fact that Rip's offensive game wore down the other team's SG or SF, and I do not think Wade is a tier above for that season.
Also, what made the Pistons a unique championship team is that they really lacked a superstar. They played basketball as a team and focused on defense. A rookie like Carmelo or Bosh would be talented, but from a chemistry standpoint, it could screw up the entire team (e.g. Carmelo complaining that Larry Brown was too hard on him, wanting more minutes, etc.).
Frankly, I'd have been glad to have Carmelo learn behind Tayshaun, then bring Tayshaun off the bench when Anthony was ready. He would have been a hell of a sixth man. Pistons were at their best when Rodman was coming off the bench, even though he was one of their better players.
The more interesting question is this...if we draft someone who contributes immediately...do we trade for Rasheed? And if we don't, do we win a title? Or do we do it, and win a few?
Really though u can't really say that they would have drafted Wade or Bosh. As for as anyone would thinking at the time, the only possible person they could have taken other than Darko was Carmelo. It wasn't neccessairly a clear cut thing but Darko was a pretty highly touted prospect and I don't think there is a team in the NBA which would have taken Bosh or Wade over him (at least at the time). I remember the talk back then and there were some people who thought they should have taken Carmelo but there wasn't much Bosh or Wade talk. No one thought those guys were going to be as good as they turned out to be. On the other hand, someone on ESPN (I think Chad Ford) was saying that in the long run there was a good chance that Darko would end being a better player than Lebron.
Any of those picks would have increased the ceiling for those teams, and the pistons wouldn't be in the position they are now if they had a single one of Wade, Bosh, or Anthony.
Seriously, it's been seven years. It's time to move on. Wade's the only one of those three even still with the team that drafted him (assuming Bosh is gone).
Anthony is with the team that drafted him. And Wade is no more or no less with the team that drafted him than Bosh and LeBron are. They're all free agents. Bosh may be the most likely to leave, but they all could head somewhere else.
And Darko is like the NBA version of "The Horror"....it's one of those things that will never be forgotten.
To think I just went on an anti-Joe D. tirade this morning about signing Charlie Villanueva (27 min, 16 ppg, 7 rbg for MIL in 2008-09) for $31M over four years after he'd cleared cap space with the disastrous Billups-Iverson trade and could've patiently waited for the 2010 class of marquee free agents without the team being much worse that it was in 2009-10.
At least misery loves company.
Why does everyone focus on the Charlie V signing? That's not really that much money in today's NBA. The Ben Gordon signing was way, way worse.
T-Wolves only made this move to entice Lebron or D-Wade to come to Minnesota
Bron will only consider Minnesota if they also sign Tskitishvili.
Why would signing Darko make Minnesota more appealing for LeBron or D-Wade?
(Edit: on my second reading, I realized that was most likely a joke...and a good one. Well-played, sir. Well-played.)
WTF?
...I have a Darko pistons jersey in my closet...
It's good for some laughs
Break it out once in a while when I'm ready to celebrate.
...could be a joyus occasion in a DM jersey?
... anytime a human victory cigar is required?
It's actually not that bad of a move. It's just a little strange to make this move on July 1. Darko's not that hot of a commodity.
But anyway, at $5 million a year, Darko is making about the NBA average. (The salary cap is $58 million.) That's about right for a guy that averaged 8.3 points and 5.5 rebounds.
$5 mil is a bit high actually. Although the average is around $4.8 mil this is greatly dragged up by the fact that some players have $18M+ salaries. The median (meaning the 6th-7th best paid player on any given team) is much lower than $4.8M and there's no way that Darko is in the top half of the NBA.
The NBA doesn't have a hard cap, so almost every team is above it, and the average salary for 2009-10 was $5.356 million. Yes, the median was somewhat lower, but big men also probably should earn a little more than that since they're so hard to find. Paying $5 million a year (and it's probably more like $4M for this coming year, since NBA salaries usually escalate in value) to big man with average ability is a reasonable move.
Wow. Just earlier in the year Darko said he was going back to European after the season was over.
until Kahn came along and said F*@! this wall! Seriously, as a Timberwolves fan, I wonder if he is just picking names and numbers out of a hat. At this point I'm hoping we replace Kahn with Bill Simmons. Even if he fails, it's not like it can get any worse than it already is.
This still isn't as bad as giving Joe Johnsons $119 million for 6 years.
Nearly 7 Million a year for 5 years. That's just brutal. Even Darko is better than Amir at this point. Both are talented big's who just can't get it together, only Darko is bigger and more skilled, and doesn't rack up fouls quite as bad.
Right now I'd rather have Darko at $5mil a year than have tweener Maxiell at $5mil a year.
And why shouldn't he get $20 million? After all, he must have worked very hard to become 7 feet tall. Nevermind that he has the basketball skills of a female high school sophmore.