NBA Draft Bust Week: The dynamic promise of Darius Miles
By Micah Wimmer
In the early 2000s, it looked like Darius Miles was a star in the making. For NBA Draft Bust Week, we look back on his time and examine why it didn’t work out.
In the closing minute of an inconsequential game between the Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Clippers in March of 2001, something transcendent happened. Sean Rooks recovered a missed 3 by Vlade Divac and threw the ball almost the full length of the court where Lamar Odom, with his back to the basket, caught it at the free-throw line.
Odom was in midair when the ball reached him and his body language betrayed some measure of indecision before he shifted the ball to his left hand and threw it behind his back to a leaping Darius Miles who dunked it, all but sealing the game for Los Angeles. Miles only scored four points that night, but those two were enough for my 10-year-old self to maintain my belief, every time I was able to catch glimpses of him in those pre-broadband, pre-League Pass days, that he was destined for greatness.
I would stay up late and watch Clippers highlights on the 11 p.m. SportsCenter. It ensured that I would not get enough sleep for school the next day, but it was worth it to see what this team may have pulled off that night, even in the midst of their likely defeat. They had a bevy of promising young players — tremendously athletic, brazen in their youthfulness, refusing to admit they could possibly have any dues to pay. They did not win often, but expecting or hoping for victories was beside the point; it was about seeing what this young group of players was capable of now and imagining what they might someday become. That’s the lovely thing about potential: You can extrapolate whatever you want from a drop of promise. It’s easy to imagine the rough edges being transformed into luminous features, lack becoming abundance.
Miles was my favorite of these young Clippers. Selected third overall in the 2000 NBA Draft, he was the highest prep-to-pro selection at that point and became the first player ever to be drafted out of high school to be named to the All-Rookie First Team. It was not a spectacular rookie season — he averaged 9.4 points and 5.9 rebounds per game, mostly off the bench — but you could convince yourself that it was not very far off from what future stars like Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant had done in their own rookie seasons out of high school. You just had to squint a little bit — or have the breathless and exuberant belief of a 10-year-old kid.
When the Cleveland Cavaliers traded for Darius Miles in the summer of 2002, as an Akron native, I was thrilled. Sure, Cleveland was giving up its best player in Andre Miller, but I would now be able to watch Miles play every night. My naive and optimistic self believed that, with Miles and the recently drafted Dajuan Wagner, Cleveland was set up to now be the new team of the future, especially if it could draft LeBron James in 2003. The Cavs were indeed able to draft James the next summer, and while they soon would become an Eastern Conference power, it was without Miles, who had been traded to Portland and would never play in a single playoff game in his too-short career.
In the penultimate game of the Trail Blazers’ 2004-05 season, Darius Miles played the best game of his NBA life. Coming off the bench, he scored 47 points and for one night, it was easy to believe in the promise again. Part of it was mere luck — he made a variety of jumpers that did not normally fall for him — but alongside that were dunks on put-backs and in transition that evoked some of the power he had showcased on the Clippers just five years, but also a lifetime, before. He converted lay-ups where his superior athleticism allowed him to hang in the air just a shade longer than his defender. He even revived the double-fisted forehead tap after one dunk for good measure.
Unfortunately, we now know how the story ends and this game was not a sign of promise fulfilled or of a player about to turn a corner. It was just a good player having the night of his life.
After that 47-point game, Miles would play just 75 more games over the next four seasons before his career came to an end. He suffered a severe knee injury at the end of the 2005-06 season, which required micro-fracture surgery and caused him to miss two full seasons, practically ending his days as a valuable NBA player. He returned in the 2008-09 season to play 34 final games with the Memphis Grizzlies, playing his last game at just 27.
Miles seemed so full of promise. And looking back, it’s nice to see that it was not merely a case of youthful naivete that prompted me to believe in him so much. Everyone seemed to believe he, and those young Clippers, were the next big thing. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated alongside Kevin Garnett before he even made his NBA debut. There was the infamous SLAM cover with Elton Brand and Lamar Odom that promised they would “make it to the top,” if not immediately, then soon.
In an NBA that had been so long ruled by Michael Jordan, these Clippers were a decisive break from a past that now seemed distant and staid, irrelevant to the concerns of a younger generation of fans. And of those Clippers, Miles stood out. Unlike Elton Brand, his game was not a throwback and unlike Lamar Odom, he did not rely on subtleties and deception to affect the game. Instead, he was dynamic, with a style of play that was direct and undeniable, one that could be appreciated by aficionados and casual fans alike. Of course, that’s also part of why he was unable to become more than an unrefined collection of nervy potential.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easier to see why Miles failed. He had more athleticism than ability, lacking a jump shot that could buoy him when he struggled to get to the hoop. It was more than enough to dominate at the high school level, and on some nights, it was still able to set him apart from other NBA players, but not consistently enough. Also, the fact that he spent the first three seasons of his career on unstable Clippers teams with the worst owner imaginable and a dearth of veteran leadership — Brand, the oldest member of that Clippers core was just two years older than Miles — and then a Cavaliers team focused on tanking above all else must have stunted his development in some ways.
Above all else, though, it was the injuries. He was still just 24 when he injured his knee, and while it’s not likely he would have developed into the star many imagined, he almost certainly would have become more than he did if injuries and bad luck had not conspired against him at such a young age.
I’m not sure why I was so drawn to Miles. Perhaps it was a case of a suburban white kid being drawn to a cool, young black player in the same way I — and so many others like me — were loyal fans of Allen Iverson despite understanding little of the world he came from and represented. As if by being a fan of such a player, I could adopt some of their presumed coolness for myself, escaping the drab trappings of the suburb I grew up in.
But man, when he dunked though, it was electric. Even now, watching highlights on YouTube almost 20 years later, the joy of seeing these plays again makes questions about race and culture and socioeconomics disappear, at least for a few seconds. In those moments, it was easy to see why so many thought the seeds of stardom were within him. It seemed like Darius Miles could rise forever.