Survey Says? Oden was the right pick

Take yourself back to June 2007. If you were about to watch the draft, you already knew the outcome of the first 2 picks… Greg Oden from The Ohio State University would go #1, followed by Kevin Durant from Texas. This was a given. Every GM in the league would’ve drafted that way unless they had Yao, Shaq, or Dwight Howard on their team… and even then they probably would’ve drafted Oden and then tried to trade his rights.

Fast-forward to today, November 19, 2010, and Greg Oden is out for the season…. Again. In just his 4^th year in the Association, Mr. Oden has missed nearly 3 of them (2 microfracture surgeries, one on each knee, and a fractured patella in his 3rd season.) His career total for games is sitting at 82. If you read the previous post by Mr. Harris, you will know that Kevin Durant’s career has been slightly more scintillating.

Why bring all of this up? Am I trying to rile up the TrailBlazer fans? Absolutely not. In fact, I’m lending support. Greg Oden was the correct pick in the 2007 Draft.

Obviously if you knew what would happen, you would never have drafted Oden over Durant, but if we all knew what would happen, we’d be billionaire stock brokers driving Maseratis and enjoying KC and the Sunshine Band on our solid gold iPods.

Greg Oden was THAT good in his prep/college career that the choice wasn’t even a choice for the Blazers. How many players have been Gatorade National Player of the Year twice during high school? Two, Mr. Oden and that fellow with the talents in the South Beach. In his one year at tOSU, Oden not only carried the Buckeyes to the National Title Game, he did so while effectively making other fairly good college players look like NBA 1^st Round talent, as was evidenced by Mike Conley Jr. going 4^th (FOURTH!) overall and Daequan Cook going 21^st overall. I’m not sure you’ve noticed, but these guys aren’t exactly 1^st Round players. They should be sending Greg ‘Thank-You’ cards every 1^st and 15^th for his largess. Throughout high school and college, Mr. Oden never lost a home game. Even in a losing effort in the National Title Game, Oden put up 25 points, grabbed 12 boards, and blocked 4 shots… going against Al Horford and Joakim Noah, who joined him as Top 10 picks in the draft that year, both living up to their billing (unlike Oden’s Buckeye teammates). So what if he looked ridiculous doing chin-ups every time he dunked the basketball? He was allowed to be silly, he absolutely dominated games on the defensive end and was a great teammate. So what if he looked 47 and walked with a slight limp? Dominant Centers are hard to find, and here was one NBA ready (talent-wise), unlike Darko or Bargnani, projects who each went Top 3 in recent drafts. The Blazers couldn’t say “Oden!” fast enough.

The TrailBlazers were the “it” team. The up-and-comers, the equivalent to today’s Thunder (is that irony? Yeah… I think that is irony). Young guns Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge just needed that big man in the middle, that defensive anchor, and they would be ready to challenges the Lakers, Mavs, and Spurs of the West. Oden fell into their laps (they had just a 5.3% chance of winning the 1^st Pick) It should’ve been a good story from there, but the injuries mounted quickly, and we are here today, with Oden on the sideline and the Blazers once again struggling with depth at the Center position.

In between the injuries, during those rare healthy games, flashes of his potential were seen, scoring in the 20s, pulling down double-digit rebounds, and altering shots and controlling the paint. An alternate history might have been much kinder to the Rose City, but it was not to be.

Too many look at it now and think that the Blazers made a bad choice…. but they didn’t.