When the Detroit Pistons had the second overall draft pick back in 2003, they infamously chose Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony. Of course, the Pistons won the NBA championship against the starstudded Los Angeles Lakers on that very same season thanks to Rip Hamilton carrying much of the scoring burden.
In a recent interview, Anthony spilled some beans as he told the world that the Pistons promised to draft him. This will go down as a huge “What If?” question in NBA history as Milicic never really lived up to the hype.
Milicic just averaged 1.4 points and 1.3 rebounds on his rookie season with the Pistons. During their playoff run, he only played 8 games and averaged an abysmal stat line of 0.8 points.
Meanwhile, Melo was balling for the Denver Nuggets as he finished as a runner-up behind LeBron James for the NBA Rookie of the Year honors after averaging 21 points and 6.1 rebounds.
Anthony recently said that the Pistons could have won back-to-back championships if he ended up in Detroit instead of Denver. Motor City Legend Rip Hamilton (ripcity3232) couldn't agree more as he recently commented on an IG post by ClutchPoints:
Melo could have been a big-time contributor for the Pistons as he went on to become one of the best players in the league back then. The future Hall-of-Famer is one of the best scorers in NBA history as he is currently tenth on the all-time scoring list with 27,370 points.
The Pistons surely regretted that draft night decision as the 10x all-star has career averages of 23.0 points per game, which is incomparable to Milicic's 6.0.
Milicic has not played in the league since 2012 while Melo is currently competing for his first NBA Championship with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Surely, the Pistons ask themselves all the time “What if we drafted Carmelo Anthony?”.
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