What if Detroit drafted Carmelo......

T

TheFied

2,500+ Posts
They won a title without him when he was in the Association. But how good would Detroit be with Carmelo? Or does he shoot too much? I have a feeling him and Rasheed might not get along.
 
Would have been horrible for Detroit - they mesh together very well how they are. Would you honestly say you would rather have Carmelo than Tayshaun Prince? Carmelo may score more, but I would choose Tayshaun Prince if I was starting a team from scratch.
 
Dumars messed up very badly, one of the worst pics ever that high. Melo would have played and Prince would get major minutes too. Probably they would have moved Rip Hamilton.
 
It's easy in retrospect to say they made a bad choice, but at the time, they were in a good position to take a chance on a young guy with potential. They didn't need someone to chip in right away, so a project was fine. Bosh and Wade were both considered projects at the time, although not as long term (Bosh was really skinny, Wade, was he a 1 or 2 guard).
 
Carmelo might have become a much better player if he had gone to Detroit, if he would have listened to those around him. He might have learned to pass and play defense. I can't see Dumars (The best GM in basketball IMO) putting up with his selfish BS for long.

I also agreed with the Darko pick at the time. If he develops, you have a dominate post player which is the most valuable commodity in the NBA. If he doesn't, they are still championship caliber. The fact that when he didn't pan out, Dumars could turn it into Stuckey (Looking very good for a rookie in the playoffs) was not a horrible result.

I also wonder if Brown had given Darko more minutes early in his career, if that would have changed the outcome. He would not have jeopardized the Pistons success by playing him more. He never played unless the game was over. In fact, I seem to recall an announcer calling him the "human victory cigar" because whenever he came in the game, the game was over and Detroit was winning. His attitude was not great, but he was only 18(if not 17?) with huge expectations and never playing. Yes, his attitude should have been to work harder, but even by the end of the year, there were no minutes and he was a joke. That is a difficult situation for anyone, much less an 18 year old foreigner.
 
Bosh definitely would have been the pick if they could re-do that draft.

Darko might have developed differently had Brown played him more. One problem was Darko's maturity, he was a superstar in Serbia and he had been treated as such for a long long time, when he came to the league though no one cared about his Serbian status, especially Brown. Larry Brown completely destroyed his confidence. Had he been a stronger player mentally he might have developed fine, but he wasn't and Brown ripped him constantly and even at the end of games when he did come in, if he messed up Brown yanked him and you could see him ripping him on the bench.

Dumars wishes he could have that pick back though. Bosh would be dominating right now. They'd have their "go-to" guy that everyone says they are lacking. They would have had a hell of a front line for 3-4 years with Sheed, Wallace, McDyess, and Bosh. Not to mention Okur for a year or two.
 
i was a huge bosh fan. wade would have been great for them. obviously it was between melo and darko according to the heads out there.

if you draft melo, you prolly move him or Prince as neither could play SG.
 
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