In their own words: How the legendary 2003 NBA draft shaped basketball's future - ESPN

There aren't many things in professional sports that live up to the hype. The 2003 NBA draft was one of them.

Excitement was building for over a year — first among league executives and then among fans — about the new blood on its way. And boy, did the league need it.

The NBA was in a recession. With Michael Jordan retired, for good this time, and a scarcity of marketable young stars, fan interest had waned. Outside of the Los Angeles Lakers and their stars, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, the league didn't have many national draws.

The 2003 NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and New Jersey Nets was the lowest rated in history, losing more than 50% of the audience from just five years earlier when Jordan won his last title with the Bulls.

There was a belief, or at least a hope, that a new generation of stars could turn things around, and the 2003 class had several promising candidates.

LeBron James was the first high school basketball player whose stardom had already reached to national level thanks to several magazine covers and games broadcast on ESPN before he'd even turned 18 years old. Carmelo Anthony catapulted into the spotlight by leading Syracuse to the national title as just a freshman. A tough Chicago kid named Dwyane Wade also made a name for himself in the same NCAA tournament, leading Marquette to an improbable Final Four run and completing one of the greatest performances in tournament history with a triple-double against Kentucky.

It wasn't just domestic players, either. With Dirk Nowitzki becoming a superstar and Yao Ming a superstar in the making, teams began jetting off across the world to try to find the next international star, and a 17-year-old with bleach-blond hair named Darko Milicic