Darko Milicic Arrested: A Statistical Anomaly Among NBA Players?

Detroit Pistons forward Darko Milicic was arrested on Wednesday for driving with a suspended license in Michigan. (Stan Donaldson, "Pistons Darko Milicic Arrested for Driving with a Suspended License," Detroit Free Press, 10/13/2005). Milicic's license had been suspended earlier this year for two unpaid traffic tickets. Under Michigan law, a first offense for driving with a suspended license carries a maximum fine of $500 and a maximum sentence of 93 days in jail.

Milicic's arrest initially proves surprising when compared to arrest trends among NBA players. Back in July, my study on arrest propensity among NBA players and age/education revealed that those NBA players least likely to be arrested are international players (with prep-to-pro players the second least likely, and those with college degrees the most likely). Specifically, though 12.2% of all NBA players are international, only 1.2% of arrested NBA players are international. In striking contrast, while 41.1% of all NBA players spent four years in college, a startling 57.1% of arrested NBA players spent four years in college.

So why did Milicic--a native of Serbia-Montenegro--buck the trend? Why isn't he like his well-behaved international brethren?

Perhaps the problem lies in the question. The term "international player" may be unsatisfactorily vague. There are 193 countries on Earth; if a player is from any of 192 of them, then the NBA conveniently classifies him as "international." It stands to reason that there are dramatic sociological and anthropological variances among those 192 countries, and any data generated from the collective behavior of players from those countries may not prove predictive. Along those lines, an NBA player from Serbia-Montenegro may embrace very different values and beliefs than one from Zaire, Brazil, or South Korea. Or maybe he does embrace similar values and beliefs, but only because of similar upbringing or shared faith, and not (perhaps) because of national origin. Who knows? The point is that the phrase "international player" is likely an inaccurate metric for analytical study, and judging Milicic against other "international players" may not be fair or meaningful.

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