Originally posted by QuDDus
Oh please shocky give me a break. He is not NBA ready then what the hell was he drafted for second place for? Anthony is a great player and will be a superstar something darko will never be.
And oneal was not garbage he just was stuck in portland and road the bench until he finally got his chance to shine in indiana.
Unlike darko who show no talent at all.
He is only 18 and plays like a 10yr old
He was drafted on potential, the same way about every high school talent in the NBA is. He isn\'t strong enough, he isn\'t pollished enough, but he has shown considerable progress, something anyone on the team would tell you.
Besides, I think personally that Tayshaun Prince is a perfect player in that Detroit system already, and him combined with Carlos Delfino, who you\'ll see playing at SF next year, gives them plenty of talent at that position.
Also, everyone automatically assumes that Melo would make Detroit better. What are you basing that on? The defense would take a definite step down from Prince to Melo, and although Melo does score, he takes a lot of shots to do so. On a team with Rip, Billups, and Rasheed, those shots aren\'t as readily available as they are on a team with no other true scorer. If he were on Detroit Melo wouldn\'t be putting up close to the same numbers he is in Denver, and I\'m honestly not sure he would have helped. I think Prince\'s 10 ppg on a considerably higher shooting percentage than melo has and his great defense are a better fit for what Detroit needs. It\'s not like they\'re failing to win without Melo. It could have done all sorts of things to the chemistry and all of that. As much as I like Carmelo, I just don\'t think he\'d fit that bad boy persona like the other Pistons starters do. I also don\'t think Larry Brown would have started him, at least not to begin the season, even if they did have him.
And as for comparing O\'Neal and Darko, O\'Neal had 4 ppg on 10 mpg his rookie year, numbers that went down the each of the following years. Darko had 1.5 ppg on 4 mpg. Those numbers projected are about the same. The fact is, you make the excuse that O\'Neal was riding the bench though, when Darko is even more so.
And it\'s not like O\'Neal was an instant All Star in Indiana either. It took him a year as a starter before he started putting up good numbers, he had to mature into it. His first year he had about 12 ppg as a starter in Indiana.
