Dario Saric waited a few years before coming to the NBA after being drafted. 76ers fans didn’t like it much, but that’s what comes with the territory of drafting handsome Euros. But I’m thinking that maybe he didn’t wait long enough. Maybe he shouldn’t have come over at all?
Hear me out. It’s a well-established fact that the longer a hyped Euro stays in Europe (and dominates there, otherwise he’s just Janis Timma), the more NBA fans want to see him. The idea of the player becomes far, far greater than what the player can hope to achieve in the NBA. The mystique outweighs the reality.
If Saric had stayed overseas, plied his trade for a decade or two without ever even considering the NBA besides cryptic responses to interview questions like “We’ll see”, his legacy would be a whole lot different. Right now he’s a role-player, and he’s likely to stay that way his whole career unless he ends up on a tanking team where he gets to be the man. But if he won some Euro MVP’s, some Euro championships, and ignored the NBA, we’d have discussions like “would Dario Saric have been the GOAT if he had ever come over?” and the answer to the question “who is the greatest player never to play in the NBA” would be “Dario Saric”. That’s a legacy I would totally take over being a decent but unremarkable role-player.