Out of the Dark(o)ness

A funny thing happened on the way to basketball oblivion.

Darko Milicic became...good.

Any NBA fan over the age of 17 knows Darko's story: the next great 7-foot European player, he was supposed to eclipse all his predecessors: Petrovic, Divac, Kukoc, Marciulionas, all of them. Out of the 2003 draft class, Darko was projected as the third-best talent, behind LeBron and  D-Wade and ahead of Carmelo and Chris Bosh. Considering how great of a flop Darko was for his first six seasons in the league, let's look at some of the other names that were called after him:

-Chris Kaman (no. 6)
-Mickael Pietrus (no. 11)
-David West (no. 18)
-Kendrick Perkins (no. 27)
-Josh Howard (no. 29)
-Mo Williams (no. 47)

Just for fun, we'll throw in James Jones (no. 49), since ESPN jocking him now that he's throwing up threes for the Heat. That's two rings, five Finals appearances, and seven All-Star games combined.

In his defense, Darko was over-hyped by draft insiders, notably Chad Ford as Bill Simmons writes in The Book of Basketball. Still, he's on his sixth NBA team in six years, his career high in scoring is 13 points and his nickname is "Human Victory Cigar". For five years, Darko was the European Dickey Simpkins.

However, things might have finally turned in his favor. After landing on a Timberwolves team projected to finish last in the Western Conference, Darko has finally started to put up numbers. He tallied 13 points, 12 boards, five assists and five blocks against Charlotte last week, and then put up 23-16-5-6 against the Lakers. Granted, both of those were losses, but the L.A. game would have had him going against  (overrated) Pau Gasol on both ends.

So does this mean we're looking at a Darko-renaissance? Not really. For a no. 2 pick, he's still underachieving. He's got protection in Michael Beasley, Kevin Love and even Corey Brewer to some degree. The Timberwolves aren't going anywhere relatively soon (unless Ricky Rubio goes insane and decides Minnesota is more attractive than Spain), and I wouldn't be surprised if Darko dips back to Serbia this season.

Darko hasn't become what we all expected him to be yet, but at least he's no longer Euro-Dickey. That's got to count for something.