Kyle Terada-US PRESSWIRE
The Boston Celtics signed former Detroit Pistons bust Darko Milicic today. He was infamously picked second overall in the same draft that also produced Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, and Chris Bosh, who were all picked after Milicic.
Coming out of Serbia, he was heralded as an absolute can’t miss prospect who would dominate the game in so many ways. Fast forward to 2012, and he is now barely getting by at the NBA veteran. This is obviously not “getting by” to our standards, but as an NBA player, we can appropriately give him that title. He has been a bust at every stop in his career and it would be a shock to see his stay in Boston last more than one year. He provides the team nice size but that’s about it. If I were 7’0, I guess I would provide good size too, but how are my skills? Milicic is so poor at so many aspects of the game that it really is a shock that he has managed to still stay relevant all these years. He teased us a while back when it looked like he might rejuvenate his career while in Minnesota, but that was just a brief mirage as he immediately went back to being the below average player we all expect out of him.
Milicic might play a few minutes a night as a pure backup center but nothing more, as long as Kevin Garnett is healthy. Celtics fans should not hope to catch lightening in a bottle and miraculously think they could have pre-NBA Milicic on their team. He has proven that the vast potential scouts saw in him while he was a younger player was just a tease. He will be no more than the 13th man on this roster.
It’s good to see him remain in the NBA as he has done nothing wrong to bother me, I just don’t think he is very good and he set the Pistons franchise back at least five years. If the Pistons had selected any of the three players mentioned above, who knows what their team would have looked like? They certainly would have been a threat in the east and by messing up that pick; they have been stuck in mediocrity for quite some time. That’s neither here nor there. GM Danny Ainge wanted more size heading into training camp and he got that with Milicic, but everything else is a bunch of question marks.
Rob Lunder covers the Boston Celtics for Rant Sports. For all Celtics news check out the Celtics homepage on Rant Sports.
