The 2003 NBA draft was on June 26, 2003

2003 NBA Draft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joe D. hired Larry Brown on June 03, 2003 before the draft took place

SI.com - Pro Basketball - Pistons fire Carlisle, will hire Brown - Sunday June 01, 2003 11:45 AM


The mistake that Joe D. made was in not checking Brown's history of not playing European players. Up until Brown's first year as coach of the Pistons he had only played two European players any significant minutes in his 20 years as a professional coach.

Rik Smits started for Brown when Brown coached Indiana and Tony Kukoc played for Brown for a couple of years at Philadelphia. That was it.

Brown never liked or felt comfortable coaching European players and he didn't like playing inexperienced players.

Larry Brown Coaching Record - Basketball-Reference.com

Joe D. should have researched Brown's coaching propensities further before drafting Darko. I will always belief that if Popovich was the Piston coach when the Piston's drafted Darko, he would now be an all star.

An 18 year old kid by himself in a foreign country, America no less with its temptations, lots of money in his pocket and can't speak the language. With a coach like Brown the odds were stacked against DMC right from the beginning.

A kid with a lot of talent, but messed up by an old inflexible coach with no regard for his players' feelings in the plural. Two primary examples of this in addition to DMC are AI and Memo.

AI has been no where near the problem child since he no longer has had to play for the rigid dictatorial coach L. Brown.

I am amazed that DMC has become as good a player that he has given how much Brown messed his head up. Joe D. saved his NBA career by trading him. As we know DMC was ready to leave the NBA and the U.S. if he wasn't traded away from all those bad memories that Flip couldn't fix. Flip may be good with Xs and Os. But it seems to me that Flip is not the greatest in handling difficult personnel situations and could do nothing to correct the bad DMC situation that Brown had created.

Yes Joe D. should not have drafted him knowing who DMC was going to coached by in the beginning of his NBA career.