There are/were so many players on the 1st draft are busted. We should also consider the rooking player on his debut team. Even if you are 5th-10th pick and you are on a team with star players you have a big chance of not getting a good minutes to start. but if you are on a bad team you will more likely to have a great time playing coz they are more willing to sacrifice for you and see your talent at early time.
I can still remember the batch of LBJ and MELO when Detroit pick 2nd and get Milicic! theres Wade, Melo and BOsh and other good players.
Honestly, that wasn't a bad pick and I hate it when people keep talking about it like it was a terrible pick.
People forget that Milicic was probably the best Yugoslavian (best team after USA in world of basketball at the time) player at just 18-19 years old. Think about it, he was basically like the centre position Doncic, we have seen Doncic be awesome and MVP at Euroleague before he came into the league, and look how awesome he is.
The belief was that Milicic would be the same, Pistons was already a team that was on their way to win the whole league, so they were already a pretty established team, they were looking for someone who could bring something different, and Milicic was that player.
Unfortunately, he didn't pan out the way people assumed he would, but he could have been the first Jokic, before even Jokic existed, he "looked" like he could, he had the potential, so it wasn't a horrible decision at the time, only in retrospective we can say it's a bad one.
Also let's remember that, on his rookie season, Milicic won the title. Sure it wasn't thanks to him, but it shows that Pistons were already good.