Well, tonight is the big night. Darko will make his debut for the Orlando Magic when he leads the team into action against LeBron James and the rest of the Cavaliers.

There is little doubt that the NBA career of LeBron has been far superior to that of our man Milicic to date, nor is there much of a question that the players drafted immediately after Darko have enjoyed more success than he has to date. However, Darko has STILL not played any meaningful minutes in this league. Let us re-do an exercise we first conducted at the beginning of the season (when we had the mistaken belief that Darko was about to get a chance) by looking at career minutes played by the top five draft picks of 2003. Darko (the number 2 pick) has played a grand total of 553 minutes. Here is how he stacks up against the other draftees from that year:

Lebron James (number 1 pick): 8706 minutes (15.74 times Darko's minutes)
Chris Bosh (number 4 pick): 7585 minutes (13.72 times Darko's minutes)
Carmelo Anthony (number 3 pick): 7554 minutes (13.66 times Darko's minutes)
Dwyane Wade (number 5 pick): 7088 minutes (12.82 times Darko's minutes)

This gross imbalance should begin to correct itself beginning tonight.

Another interesting metric by which we can compare these players is that of name recognition. Just for fun, the names of each of the five players were thrown into Google to see how many results each would return. A search for "darko milicic" returns about 250,000 results, which is probably up considerably in comparison to what it would have been before the big trade to the Magic. Here is how the other four draftees compare:

"lebron james": 2,130,000 results (8.52 times Darko's results)
"dwyane wade": 1,460,000 results (5.84 times Darko's results)
"carmelo anthony": 1,450,000 results (5.80 times Darko's results)
"chris bosh": 610,000 results (2.44 times Darko's results)

Darko's Google power will likely grow fairly rapidly with the increased minutes he will see in Orlando. An interesting side note is the fact that Chris Bosh is also a relative laggard behind the LeBron, Dwyane, and Carmelo in this category, despite having been an excellent player throughout his career and having been chosen to the Eastern All-Star team this year. It appears that Toronto is something of a backwater town when it comes to the NBA, so that may have something to do with it.

The good news is that Darko can, and very likely will, only go up from here in all respects. Take your seats, everyone! Darko's Magic act is about to begin!