Speaking of Orlando, everybody's favorite Serbian gangster Darko Milicic was recently interviewed by HoopsHype. The interview was conducted by Nebojsa Petrovacki, "the editor of Sportska Centrala, a sports news agency from Serbia," so it very well may have been translated into English after the fact, for whatever that's worth.
Darko passed on a chance to complain about how Larry Brown used him, but he didn't hold back his feelings for Detroit's front office when pressed:
Can you compare the coaching styles of Larry Brown, Flip Saunders and Brian Hill?
DM: I’m not so sure that I’m competent enough to talk about basketball coaches. Larry Brown came to Detroit when the Pistons had a championship caliber team, while Brian Hill inherited a young team that needed a lot of teaching and improving. We’re just kids who need experience and Coach Hill seems to know how to make us all better as individual players and as a team. I’m glad that I have a chance to work with him.
Is there more trust between you and your team’s management now in Orlando comparing to the years you spent in Detroit?
DM: No, I think that the level of professionalism in both organizations is the same. The one thing I didn’t understand in Detroit is that Joe Dumars, as Detroit’s GM, didn’t want to influence the coaching decisions of Larry Brown and Flip Saunders. I just can’t buy that story that the GM is telling me that, if it is up to him, I would get more minutes, but since Flip is the coach, it’s his decision that I was benched almost all the time. Regarding Orlando, you probably know that I was offered a new four-year contract which I liked and I wanted to sign, but the very last day before the signing, they withdrew the contract. That’s all business, I know. For me, just one more reason to focus only on this year and strictly on basketball issues and leave this business side of it all aside.
Darko Milicic: "We think we can win the title this year" [HoopsHype]
(via Chris McCosky's "blog")