NBA Draft Bust Week: Donnie Darko Milicic

Donnie Darko and Darko Milicic have more in common than an uncommon name. For NBA Draft Bust Week, the Detroit Pistons’ infamous No. 2 overall pick takes centerstage.

In 2001, New Market Films released a science-fiction/psychological thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal called Donnie Darko. Though it raked in just $7.5 million at the box office, the film was made on only a $4.5 million budget and became a critically acclaimed underground favorite.

Less than two years later, Darko Milicic would be selected by the Detroit Pistons as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft. Aside from sharing an uncommon name, the similarities between these two seemingly unrelated Darkos are striking.

Donnie Darko was a cult classic; Darko Milicic has become something of a cult legend. Both protagonists were sulking, brooding, morose. Both were prone to profanity-laced rants. And both may have been the unlikely saviors of their towns, even if the outside world never realized it.

“28 days…6 hours…42 minutes…12 seconds…that is when…the world will end.” — Frank, Donnie Darko

The world as Donnie Darko knew it was supposed to end in 28 days, six hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds, according to Frank, the giant, horrifying-looking, prophetic rabbit. Had Frank appeared with a cryptic countdown for the other Darko, the numbers would’ve been a little different:

“8,638 minutes…468 games…10 seasons…that is when…your career will end.”

Indeed, Milicic did last 10 years in the NBA, contrary to what his “draft bust” reputation would indicate. The problem is he suited up a for a mere 96 games over two and a half seasons with the team that drafted him before being jettisoned to the Orlando Magic. He scored a grand total of 152 points in Detroit, posting averages of 1.6 points and 1.2 rebounds in 5.8 minutes per game while shooting 33.9 percent overall. It would’ve taken a miracle for the Serbian to shed the “draft bust” label after such a gloomy start to his career.

Unfortunately, the breakthrough never came. He played well with the Magic during his first full season with the team in 2006-07, but was allowed to hit unrestricted free agency that summer. He signed a three-year deal with the Memphis Grizzlies, but was traded after the second year of his contract to the New York Knicks.

He played eight games in the Big Apple before being traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves, where he enjoyed his best NBA season … in 2010-11, seven years after being drafted. He was amnestied by the Wolves in the summer 2012, signed with the Boston Celtics for the 2012-13 campaign and then was released by the team at his own request after suiting up for only one game. He would never play in the NBA again.

In The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons described him as one-of-a-kind for all the wrong reasons:

"“A seven-foot Serbian teenager with the upside of a cross between Derrick Coleman and David Robinson gets drafted too high by the wrong team, faces impossible expectations, folds from the pressure, starts looking more pale/depressed/overwhelmed/bitter than a postpuberty Macaulay Culkin, then self-combusts to the point that he’s completely and hopelessly useless before even turning old enough to legally rent a car? This will never happen again.”"

For his career, the former No. 2 overall pick averaged 6.0 points, 4.2 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in 18.5 minutes per game. Those numbers evoke enough doomsday vibes as it is. Then you remember the future Hall-of-Famers and NBA champions drafted right after him, like Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, and the story gets even more tragic.

“Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood.” — Gretchen Ross, Donnie Darko

LeBron James, the No. 1 pick in that 2003 draft, became one of the two greatest players of all time. Carmelo Anthony, the No. 3 pick, got to lead a Denver Nuggets team from day one and became one of the best scorers the game has ever seen. Chris Bosh anchored the Toronto Raptors franchise before accepting a more refined role to win championships with the Miami Heat, while Dwyane Wade was the face of his franchise for his entire career.

Little did anyone know that Milicic, who would win an NBA championship in his very first season, was joining a terrible situation for his development when he was drafted by a 50-win Pistons team that would go on to appear in six straight Eastern Conference Finals. His fellow top-five picks were destined for greatness because of their undeniable talent, work ethic and favorable draft situations that empowered them. Darko was a bust, to be sure, but he never had a chance.

This is not unlike the doomed protagonist of Donnie Darko. For those unfamiliar with the film, Donnie is a teenage boy who sleepwalks outside one night and is told when the world will end by a figure in an extremely creepy-looking rabbit costume. When he wakes up on a golf course the next morning, Oct. 2, and returns home, he finds a jet engine has crashed into his bedroom.

Over the course of the story, Donnie falls in love with a girl named Gretchen, who is killed in a tragic accident as the end of the world approaches. A vortex forms over Donnie’s bedroom while he takes the body of his love to a nearby ridge overlooking the town. He watches as an engine from the plane carrying his mother is sucked into a vortex, and events of the previous 28 days unwind. Donnie wakes up at home, realizes the date is Oct. 2 and laughs as the jet engine crashes into his bedroom once again, crushing him.

It may seem like a downer of a movie, and it kind of is, but the whole point is there is a Primary Universe and a Tangent Universe. Almost all of the story takes place in this unstable Tangent Universe, where Donnie is chosen as the hero meant to correct this deviation from the Primary Universe, which needs to be corrected within 28 days lest it collapses in on itself.

He was able to do so, at which point, he either chose to die, suffered a psychotic break and couldn’t leave his room to avoid his fate, or was simply the Primary Universe Donnie, completely unaware of the fate he was about to suffer. In any case, he saves the universe but pays the ultimate price. In a weird, twisted way, he never had a chance either.

Film Colossus explains that the Tangent Universe is basically a virus and the Primary Universe uses the people within this Tangent Universe as an immune system, helping guide the hero to the point where he can destroy that virus. This makes Donnie Darko something of a deus ex machina — a contrived and unexpected plot device meant to save a seemingly hopeless situation.

Milicic, meanwhile, was drafted as the hero meant to usher in the future for the Detroit Pistons. He addressed a position of need in the frontcourt, and though it may seem strange to think of a bust as someone who actually helped the franchise, in this rare case, it might actually be true.

Donnie: “I made a new friend.”
Dr. Lillian Thurman: “Real or imaginary?”
Donnie: “Imaginary.”

Both Darkos were anointed as the saviors in their universe, but ultimately became sacrificial plot devices in their own stories. Donnie was chosen by Frank and the Tangent Universe; Milicic was chosen by Joe Dumars and a tangential plane of existence where he was actually going to turn into a legitimate NBA player. There’s probably a whole Tangent Universe where NBA Draft prospects actually live up to their pre-draft projections, and in that place, Milicic ascended to the heights of stardom.

Don’t forget, the Pistons weren’t the only team buying into Milicic’s tangential plane of potential before the draft. Though some considered it a mistake to take him at No. 2, it was really only him and Carmelo Anthony in the discussion for the next pick after LeBron.

ESPN‘s Chad Ford gushed over Milicic’s potential after the infamous, impromptu Pistons workout that had everyone buzzing:

"“Darko was just phenomenal. It couldn’t have been more perfect in a certain way. At some point the coaches got involved and asked to see particular things. And Darko couldn’t miss and was aggressive and rose to the moment with the players watching … It was literally the best workout I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen hundreds and it was the best. When you have a 7-1 kid, who is 17 years old, doing the things he was doing, it was a ‘wow’ moment, especially for a team that needed a big man. There was just a buzz afterward.”"

Pistons scout Will Robinson, who also compared Darko to a young Wilt Chamberlain, similarly set the bar too high:

"“He’s going to own the game. Own the game. We’re going to have to build a new arena. The only thing that could destroy a kid like that is a woman.”"

Former ESPN writer Marc Stein asked NBA executives whether it was worth taking him over LeBron James in the No. 1 spot. Pistons trainers raved about his lateral quickness and explosiveness. After that legendary workout, taking Milicic No. 2 overall wasn’t such a crazy idea. The Primary Universe in Detroit needed a hero, and it chose this Tangential, potential-laden version of Darko.

Film Colossus aptly explains this phenomenon of ascribing our own ideas of people to create these Tangent realities, and though it was written about a disturbing movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and a horrifying bunny, it also applies to how NBA Draft prospects are sometimes evaluated:

"“We can even extrapolate this to our reality … All the time, we let stories and second hand information shape how we think of someone. We create versions of these people based on the scraps of information we collect over time … We create entire tangent realities for them. And maybe that matches up pretty well with the actual reality. But oftentimes, it’s not what we expected.”"

I felt this sensation with Darko Milicic firsthand, before he had even played his first NBA game. While enjoying NBA Live 2004 with two friends, we would randomly choose our teams. I landed on the Pistons and was thrilled to realize this new foreign-born rookie I knew nothing about (we pronounced his name “Mili-kick”) was absolutely lights out from 3. This was a game where good players rarely missed, but Video Game Darko dropped 48 points on my buddy the first time I ever played with him. NBA Live 2004 was all in on “Mili-kick,” and so was I.

Unfortunately, that Tangential reality never materialized. Darko “Mili-kick” was going to set the world on fire. Darko Milicic was the sulking draft bust whose failed career somehow became the sacrifice that actually got the Pistons to the promised land.

Donnie Darko: “Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit?”
Frank: “Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?”

If it sounds like Darko Milicic is being excused for his poor attitude, lackluster skills and subpar work ethic, that’s not the intention. However, he wasn’t exactly drafted into the most ideal situation for a foreign-born teenager in need of proper molding. As is always the case with draft busts, a large part of the fault lies with the front office that selected that player.

Joe Dumars may have engineered the Rasheed Wallace trade just a few months later that helped Detroit win a championship in Darko’s first season, but it doesn’t absolve him of the blame for one of the biggest draft busts ever.

Asking Milicic why he was wearing some stupid suit and posing as an NBA player is a fair question, but by a similar token, someone probably needed to ask Dumars why he was wearing that stupid GM suit.

As Dumars admitted it himself to MLive.com’s Brendan Savage:

"“The background on [Milicic] was about 20 percent of what we do now. I look back on it now and realize you didn’t know half of the stuff you needed to know.”"

One workout convinced draft scouts that Darko was a real NBA player, when it was just a suit. Unfortunately, too little of the blame goes to Dumars, who, even after constructing the 2004 NBA champions in Motown, would later be revealed as a guy just wearing a GM suit (with two cell phones attached).

The front office of a 50-win team making a mistake wasn’t the only outside variable that changed the course of Milicic’s career, however. Playing for head coach Larry Brown absolutely shattered his confidence, as the young prospect rarely saw the court. Being part of a crowded frontcourt with Sheed, Ben Wallace and Mehmet Okur didn’t help matters, nor did the “Human Victory Cigar” nickname he was given after only seeing action once games were totally out of hand.

And of course, we can’t forget that Milicic broke his hand in the 2004 NBA Finals, robbing him of a crucial summer of development after his first season in the league. All of these issues coalesced into one of the most memorable draft busts ever … that may have helped Detroit win a title.

“Destruction is a form of creation.” — Donnie Darko

It’s tantalizing to think about what might have been if the Pistons had taken Carmelo Anthony instead of Milicic in the No. 2 spot. Melo became one of the most gifted scorers of all time, and though he never got past the conference finals in his career, and ultimately became “overrated” because of the turmoil in his last few seasons, in his prime, everyone saw how much he could help a team — especially a Detroit team in need of a scoring punch.

Although we’ll never know the real answer to this what-if scenario, it’s worth mentioning that Tayshaun Prince already occupied the 3, and at the time, Anthony wasn’t big or strong enough to occupy the power forward spot. The NBA didn’t really dabble in small-ball 4s at the time, so someone would’ve been the odd man out.

The truth is, if the Detroit Pistons had chosen correctly and taken Carmelo Anthony second overall, they might not have won the 2004 NBA Finals. Bill Simmons, a noted critic of the selection of Darko Milicic, explained it perfectly in The Book of Basketball:

"“If ‘Melo goes to Detroit, you know what happens? Detroit loses the ’04 title. He screws up their chemistry and threatens [Tayshaun] Prince’s confidence just enough that we wouldn’t have seen the same Pistons team that fileted the ’04 Lakers. Also, [Larry] Brown coached ‘Melo in the 2004 Olympics and they loathed each other to the degree that a bitter ‘Melo went into a yearlong tailspin. Do you really think these guys wouldn’t have clashed in Detroit?“The long-term effect: Brown quits; ‘Melo or Prince gets traded; that Detroit nucleus of Hamilton-Billups-Wallace-Wallace never makes a Finals; Darko gets major minutes on a lottery team in his formative years and potentially turns into something other than a mopey dunk tank …. Picking the wrong guy ended up winning Detroit that one championship.”"

Darko Milicic was a draft bust, and the primary blame for that fate lies with him. He was moody, entered the league thinking he was sent by God, pouted upon realizing what his role would look like, punched walls, went on profanity-laced rants, got out of shape, showed up drunk to practices, got into fights and never panned out because of it.

But as painful as it may have been to watch, and as much as Milicic ultimately took the fall for being wasted in that No. 2 spot, selecting a player who was unprepared for the league may have allowed the 2004 Detroit Pistons to cement their place in the history books as NBA champions.

Like Donnie Darko was the deus ex machina sent to save the Primary Universe and paid the ultimate price, Darko Milicic was doomed by circumstance and wound up helping Detroit in the process. Both Darkos were tragic plot contrivances, but unlike the deceased Donnie, life didn’t end for Milicic after the NBA.

“I just hope, that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief…because there will be so much to look forward to.” — Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko found peace in his demise. So too has Darko Milicic, who isn’t afraid of calling it like it is. He knows he was a major draft bust. He knows he’s mostly to blame for it. And yet, he’s moved on with his life after the end of the world.

In a terrific ESPN feature with Sam Borden, Milicic went as far as saying, “I kind of feel like Old Darko died. Like, when I think about myself, or myself when I was playing, I feel like I’m sort of thinking about someone who is dead.”

So who is the New Darko? For starters, someone who acknowledges that he grew to hate basketball. Someone who’s owned up to his own failures and excuses, citing his youth and being unprepared for life in the NBA. And someone who’s finally found his peace as a farmer of apples and cherries.

"“I’ve gained 90 pounds since I stopped playing,” he told Yahoo! Sports‘ Ben Rohrbach. “I’m at 350 right now. I’m working at my farm and enjoying that kind of production. I take walks through my fields and watch the process, which makes me really happy.”"

Unlike most players who crash and burn out of the league, Darko isn’t broke; in fact, he’s very well off financially. He owns 125 acres of land and has invested $8 million in his apple orchard in his hometown of Novi Sad, Serbia, where he lives with his wife Zorana and his three children.

Darko Milicic should be seen as the greatest draft bust in franchise history, not the biggest. He earned over $50 million in his career, won a championship in his first season, unknowingly saved Detroit from Carmelo Anthony chemistry problems and retired from basketball at the age of 28. As The Ringer’s Mark Titus argues, if anything, he should be remembered as a cult hero.

At one point early on in Donnie Darko, Gretchen learns our protagonist’s name and asks, “What the hell kind of name is that? It’s like some sort of superhero or something?” to which Donnie replies, “What makes you think I’m not?”

As much as he was a tragic plot device for the Pistons, Darko Milicic is now the author of his own story. And in this story, he finally receives credit as the unlikely hero.