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I think once Darko got his first two points out of the way he did fine. It took a while for me to accept that he was going to only get minutes in blowout games. But every time they have footage of practice in the news, there's usually shots of Larry Brown working with Darko one-on-one. There's a lot of things that go into the development of a big man, especially an 18-year old, from Serbia, no less. Darko needed to bulk up, and he's made a committment to doing that. Name one 18-year old big man that's come in and posted better stats than Darko. I don't think you can as Darko is the youngest player in NBA history. A lot of people don't understand that. They see he's not playing like a #2 pick should and label him a bust. Jermaine O'Neal, Dirk Novitzski, Zach Randolph all took 3+ years to develop and Darko will likely be the same way. And also, how many players in the NBA were the #2 overall pick in the draft, and landed on a back-to-back 50 win team? You're not going to get the playing time when you've got the same players back that led your team to that number of wins.
This offseason I am going to go back and look for all the pre-season articles about Darko. There was nothing other than praise for him in there. If Darko had landed on, say, a Denver with the #2 pick, his development would be much faster because he would get playing time, like Carmelo Anthony did. But if Carmelo Anthony was on the Pistons, I think he'd be riding the pine too. 'Melo wouldn't have been able to prove himself because he wouldn't have gotten the minutes that he's getting now in Denver. Besides, Larry Brown has a history of not playing rookies. But if I'm choosing a coach to develop a eventual dominate big man, I've going to choose Larry Brown.
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