Darko Milicic will forever be remembered among NBA fans as one of the biggest busts in NBA history. In a draft class that included LeBron James, Carmelo Antony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, Darko was selected No. 2 overall, before making more than $52 million over a 10-year career in which he scored only 6 points per game. As far as any of us knew during his playing career, the seven-footer was a lazy and immature bum who had neither the talent nor the commitment to make it in the NBA.
Well a new profile of Milicic from ESPN’s Sam Borden both affirms those assumptions and recasts them. Borden reports that Darko was never that passionate about basketball but treats that fact not as a character deficiency but as an objective—maybe even sympathetic—reality. Milicic began playing basketball because he was tall, kept playing because he was good and eventually made up the fact that his game was modeled after Kevin Garnett.
So, as soon as Darko began to get some attention in the U.S., the expected questions began: “Who was your idol? Who did you love to watch?
Kevin Garnett, Darko answered. He told everyone that Garnett, a tall power forward with a wingspan wider than a school bus, was his muse. He told local television stations he liked Garnett. He told USA Today he liked Garnett. He told ESPN he liked Garnett.
Except he had barely seen Garnett play. “I just sort of found him and decided he’s the one,” Darko says now. “It seemed like the player I was supposed to like.”
Now Darko is out of the NBA, running a commercial fruit farm in his native Serbia, and he seems to be at peace with his disastrous NBA career. In fact, he views his bust status as something worth joking about.
Darko Milicic uses the word “bust” a lot, which is surprising. I thought he might avoid it or at least make a sour face when it comes up, but he doesn’t stumble over it, doesn’t stutter. It doesn’t catch in his throat like phlegm.
No, Darko is frontal. He is blunt. At 7 feet tall and approaching 300 pounds, he’s roughly the size of a garage door, but, within the first 10 minutes of meeting me, he uses the word “bust” a half-dozen times in a variety of ironic ways (“This isn’t just about how I’m a huge bust, right?”).
He jokes about being memorably dreadful, bringing up the 2003 NBA draft when he was the second pick — right ahead of Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, and right behind LeBron James. He pretends to be talking to those players, raising his hand in the air and telling them that, statistically, someone from the group is bound to be a nightmare so, fine, “You guys be the best and I’ll be the” historical smudge mark. Then, he belly-laughs.
During our interview, which runs nearly three hours, he peppers the conversation with “bust,” occasionally breaking it up with appropriate synonyms, like “disaster.” At one point, he says “bust” three times in about 15 seconds and punctuates the description of his professional basketball career by stamping an imaginary label — presumably one saying BUST — on his own forehead. The whole thing feels like part performance art, part therapy.
It’s nice to see that Darko is doing all right, with a family, a business, a comfortable amount of money and few regrets about his time in the NBA. We’ve seen other NBA busts struggle with their ignominy, from Greg Oden, who seems haunted by basketball even as he begins his second life, to Frederic Weis, who battles depression and has attempted suicide. In the end, just because we all think of Darko as a colossal NBA bust doesn’t mean he has to think of himself that way.
The ESPN story on Milicic also features details of his legendary wall-punching exploits and an anecdote about Chauncey Billups teaching him how teams shower in America. It is well worth reading in full.
[ESPN]
