The Damir Markota experience

In 2006, San Antonio drafted the radiant Damir Markota 59th overall. It was a pick that, to the uninformed such as myself, just oozed of being another one of those late second rounders foreigners that the Spurs draft with no intention of signing them for a while, following in the footsteps of Sergei Karaulov, "Jive Talking" Robertas Javtokas, Manu Ginobili, Luis Scola and Viktor Sanikidze (sorta) before them. It's a hit-and-miss process, with a disproportinate amount of hits when compared to the rest of the league. And besides, is it possible to miss with the 59th pick in the draft?

(Well, yes, but we'll come to that.)

Larry Harris, General Manager of the similarly adept Milwaukee Bucks - and by "similarly adept", I mean "completely incomparable" - decided to find out, trading his teams 2007 second rounder to San Antonio for Markota's rights, and then brought in Damir straight away on a three year contract.

Markota, in turn, decided to blow massive chunks of ass for the entire season, and show that far from being a poor man's Toni Kukoc, he was more like a tramp's version of Robert Archibald.

Showing little to no ability at any facet of the game of basketball, Markota spent a helluva lot of time sitting on the bench. Even when his team became riddled with a spate of injuries, severe enough to make them pull the plug on the season and subtlely (or not) attempt to lose out, Damir still did not see much of the court, because he was not very good. And when he did see the court, he didn't stay on it long, due to the terminal double whammy of being both rather shit at basketball, and having a bit of a minor foul problem (which would have been far worse had he played any defense whatsoever).

Seemingly, this rubbed Damir the wrong way. Per this DraftExpress article, Markota voiced his displeasure at the time, his role on it, and how they had forced him to hitting the bottle hard to drown his sorrows:

' "If I had a chance to play, I would not go to the night clubs. In some way it was the team’s fault. When you know that you’re not getting any playing time, you’re not motivated. One or two nights out won't hurt…There is no pressure, nobody is harsh on you if you lose the game, if you play bad. You’re still getting the money. There is no pressure from fans. Hopefully I’ll play more next season. No more fooling around." '

A week later, Markota was waived, while still being owed some guaranteed money and with Milwaukee in no roster spot crunch. Whoops!

Due to the previously mentioned tank job Milwaukee pulled last season, the second rounder that they gave away finished up as being pick number 33. So San Antonio managed to turn a number 59 pick in a weak draft - and the subsequent awful player - into a number 33 pick in a far stronger draft. And that seems like a pretty good piece of business from a team that quite often makes pretty good pieces of business. Whether they used that number 33 pick correctly is another matter, but time will tell. Maybe they could trade it to Milwaukee again.

Personally, I've got to say that I enjoyed every minute of it of the Damir Markota experiment. Milwaukee fans could - nay, they should - disagree with that sentiment, but it's great fun for the neutral when things go amusingly badly.

I will now stop putting down the Bucks. Promise. Well, for a bit at least.