Nearly three decades ago, the Detroit Pistons decided to pass on Carmelo Anthony during the 2003 NBA Draft. After LeBron James unsurprisingly went first overall to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Pistons shocked the basketball world when they decided to select Darko Milicic as the second overall pick over Melo. As it turns out, even Anthony himself, now with the Portland Trail Blazers, was taken aback by this development.

Anthony recently opened up about that particular moment as he discussed his relationship with LeBron James leading up to the draft. Anthony and James had it all planned out:

“That conversation was like, yo you about to go to Cleveland, and he was like you about to go to Detroit, you about to be right here next to us,” the Blazers star recalled on The Dream Team Tapes: Kobe, LeBron & The Redeem Team from Diversion Podcasts (via Lindsey Wisniewski of NBC Sports Northwest). “We’re going to be right next door to each other. This is the new game. We the new Magic, Bird, that’s how we were thinking at that point. We had the hype coming out of me coming out college, him being the No. 1 high school player being drafted. We had that hype around us.”

Needless to say, that never panned out. The Pistons went with Milicic and Anthony fell to the Denver Nuggets as the third pick. Melo and LeBron still had their careers run parallel to each other, but they were never “right next door to each other” as they had originally envisioned.

Anthony recalled the exact moment he learned that Detroit was going to gloss him over:

“And as (LeBron) gets called, I get the call, my agent is there like Detroit is up next, Detroit taking Darko [Milicic]. I’m like what?” the Blazers vet furthered.

That decision still remains to be one of the biggest question marks in NBA Draft history. For what it's worth, the Pistons traded Milicic after two and a half seasons with the team. During that tilt, the 7-foot big man averaged 1.6 points and 1.2 rebounds in 5.8 minutes per contest. We all know how Melo's career turned out.