The 2003 NBA draft is one of the most significant drafts in recent league history, as a number of superstar players came out of that class, including Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and of course, LeBron James. James is considered to be the best player of his generation and one of the best of all-time, while Anthony has established himself as one of the top offensive players in the league.
The Cavaliers won the draft lottery that year to take the hometown hero in James and 100 times out of 100 looking back, the team would make that pick. The Detroit Pistons had the second overall pick in the draft and the team was coming in as contending team, so the franchise opted to take Darko Milicic out of Europe. While Milicic had a ton of potential, looking back the Pistons clearly wish they could have this pick over again.
The pick of Milicic is considered to be one of the worst of all-time and it's because of the players taken after him in succession: Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. The Pistons would have been better off with any of those players and there are a number of other players taken in the draft that have turned out to be better pros than Milicic did. While none of these players would have gone number two during the 2003 draft, looking back now, players like Chris Kaman, Nick Collison, Kirk Hinrich, Boris Diaw, Steve Blake, Zaza Pachulia, Matt Bonner, Kyle Korver and James Jones all would have been better picks than Milicic.
The Pistons ended up winning a championship the next season, so it didn't hurt as much to miss out on players like Anthony and Wade, but the team has suffered through some tough years recently. Wade won a championship with Miami early in his career and also played with James and won more titles. Bosh joined those two players in Miami after he established himself as one of the top forwards in the league with the Raptors. Anthony led the Nuggets to the playoffs for a number of years, but could not get to the finals and he later was traded to the Knicks in a big trade.
If this draft happened today, James would still go number one, but there is no way the Pistons would take Milicic and he probably would not even be drafted. Anthony likely would go second, but the Pistons also could consider Wade and Bosh with that pick based on the makeup of the team they had. But Anthony is the second most "talented" player of that group and based on that he would go next. The Nuggets take Wade and the Raptors again take Bosh if this draft happened again.
Check here for the entire first round from the 2003 NBA draft.
