Darko milicic why

Milicic will always be inextricably linked to four generational Hall of Famers, which makes his failure stand out even more. I personally — if I had been a general manager — would have taken [Milicic] over Bosh or Dwyane Wade. He read the hype, and Darko was a confident dude. Forde continued by relaying an anecdote about the time he and Milicic saw an advertisement for a Pistons preseason game versus James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. We'll never know exactly why Darko didn't pan out, but the easiest explanation is that he just wasn't good enough. Before he was a cautionary tale for general managers and a laughingstock for fans, Darko Milicic was a supremely talented young prospect.

The consensus was that he had the unique combination of skill and physical attributes needed to dominate at the NBA level. Obviously, that never came to pass, in part because Milicic never seemed to have the mental fortitude and the drive needed to succeed. In a recent interview with Serbian outlet Blic , Milicic discussed his struggles adjusting to the league as a teenager.

I was stubborn. Maybe being young had something to do with it. Milicic was 18 years old when he was drafted by a Pistons team trying to win a title right away. Maybe if he had stayed another year in Europe, he would have been more ready to contribute and his career would have gone differently. And the walls in that apartment looked like cottage cheese, a mess of bubbly bumps and curds.

The sequence was familiar: He would come in, hammer on the walls and go to sleep. In most cities, he came to know the local contractors who could run over, throw some putty up and do a quick cover-up job with whatever paint they had handy.

Darko had always had outbursts. He called them "going crazy. By the time Darko reached the NBA, however, his emotions were more complex.

At first, he was just a teenager, an ocean away from home in a culture he didn't understand. For example, Darko would go home to shower after practices or games instead of staying in the locker room to clean up; he didn't realize that in America, the players all showered together. That's what we do here. Pistons coach Larry Brown didn't have a lot of interest in playing Darko because Detroit had received the No.

Also, when Brown did play Darko, he wanted him to work near the rim instead of passing and shooting from the outside as Darko preferred. Darko quickly plunged into a near-perpetual pout. There was wall punching. There was also drinking, and Darko began showing up to practice still tipsy after an overnight bender. It was classic high school behavior: He couldn't be the star, so he decided to be the bad-boy rebel.

The same thing happened in Orlando. And with Memphis, too, where Darko was so unhappy that he went off on a rant against the referees after an international game that was immortalized on YouTube.

Darko used such graphic profanity even the reporters interviewing him tried to calm him down. You know the craziest thing? All that wall punching In Memphis, he cracked a bone in his right hand against Indiana. And in his first season, when Detroit was on the verge of winning the NBA championship over the Lakers, Brown finally put Darko in, an opponent smacked him while he was shooting a jump shot and his hand shattered. Darko rolls his eyes when he talks about it now.

He hasn't punched a wall in a while, he says, and Zorana says the same. Darko jokes that the reason is because Serbian houses are made from masonry, with textured wallpaper stuck on top of stone. The walls in Serbia don't have any give. Zorana thinks removing the intensity of basketball from Darko's life was the key, like taking the lighter out of a gas grill.

Now, she says, the sequence at night is: Darko comes in, has dinner with the family and watches television before sometimes dozing off on the couch. It also isn't basketball that Darko watches. Anyone with even a passing interest in the sport knows about the battles between LeBron and Stephen Curry.

But when I ask Darko about the series, he looks genuinely surprised. We are sitting at his farm, and Darko glances at the fields. Darko was 18 when the Pistons drafted him, and it wasn't long before he grew sullen.

On Nov. That day, as the players were filtering into the locker room, Darko knocked on Doc Rivers' office door. Like most of Darko's coaches before him, Rivers did not see Darko playing a significant role on his team. To that point, through nine games, Darko had played a total of five minutes.

But Rivers liked Darko, liked having him in practice. So he welcomed Darko into his office and listened as Darko told him he had come to say goodbye. Darko recalls Rivers being stunned. Where are you going? You are going to play tonight.

When Darko went into the locker room to tell his teammates, several didn't seem to understand. He was leaving? Like, for good? For good, he told them. It was over. Publicly, the Celtics said Darko had asked for his release so he could return home to be with his mother, who was sick.

In truth, Darko's mother had a minor illness -- and recovered just fine -- and Darko had been planning his exit for a while. He first thought about leaving in Orlando, if he's being honest, when they didn't sign him to a contract extension. They weren't. Finally Boston took its shot, stepping forward like the last in a line of children taking swings at an empty pinata.

Leaving, then, even in the way he did, was the moment when he took back control. Is Darko a quitter? It seems too easy a label. In Darko's mind, Boston was simply the time when he decided to stop thinking everything was suddenly going to change.

There was some measure of survival in it, too; over nine years, the water had risen to Darko's chin so many times it was easy to understand why he felt certain he was about to drown. I just wanted to come back home and live another life. Zorana had packed everything, and the family flew back to Serbia the day after Darko's conversation with Rivers.

For a while, he felt relief. Then, he felt itchy and idle. Then he partied. Then he toyed with playing again, almost making a comeback with a Serbian team. Then he had a much-publicized midlife crisis which is not unreasonable at age 29 when you turn professional at age 14 , during which he became a kickboxer. He fought once. On the night of the bout, Darko stepped on the scale for the prefight weigh-in and broke it. Literally broke it. Over pounds, Darko sheepishly said. Things did not improve in the ring.

Darko had a strong knee but says he "forgot" to use it. He had a good left high kick but kicked primarily with his right. His opponent, who was much smaller, did know how: He whaled on Darko until his legs were bleeding so badly he couldn't stand up. Darko's family was "not really that happy" with his decision to fight, he says, and one evening, when we are chatting quietly, Zorana describes it to me as "stupidly stupid stupid. It seemed a wise decision. Instead, he became intrigued by agriculture.

A few friends were farmers, and that was appealing, but the element that drew Darko was the idea that he could master it. He was supposed to be a basketball wizard; that hadn't quite worked out. Farming was another chance. Darko quickly became hooked. He traveled to Italy to look at famous orchards. He learned about soil and growing patterns and tree heights.

He considered other types of fruits, then, after settling on apples, reviewed the varieties. The juxtaposition is stark: A former basketball player doesn't know the NBA Finals is even happening, but when I ask how he monitors quality in the orchard, he walks me over to a hedge and delivers a long, winding explanation about the ideal distance each apple should be from the tree trunk.

A summary: the closer to the trunk, the better. Darko's passion is real. When an unexpected snowfall damaged about 10 acres of apples this spring, he went out with the workers to try to salvage the crop. And last year, when he walked through the orchard during the first picking season, he experienced a sensation that, he says, was foreign to him: pride.

Darko trying to find his peace in farming Former NBA player Darko Milicic explains why he turned to farming after his professional career ended.

When he goes drinking now, he uses his hands most of the time. In April , Darko and his friends were at a party. There was beer. There was singing. There was lots of shouting and laughing and men raising their arms in the air.

All pretty standard. Anthony, who despite having a great career is still ringless, speculated that he would've won "two or three" championships early in his career if he had been drafted by the Pistons, though he doesn't know what would have happened after. Milicic addressed Wade and Anthony's comments in an interview with B92 , a Serbian newstation.

It is not necessary to judge and ridicule when, thank God, you have not passed the path that I have. To them, as always, I wish everyone good and every honor on their careers and in further life a lot of success and less condemnation.

Wade and Anthony's comments are on the lighter side in the sports world when it comes to ridicule toward Milicic. Even his former teammates have joked about his dismal career.