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I hope for a speedy recovery, yet somehow feel like I've been there as a fan. And typically, it looks as though Oden has a great shot at being injury prone through out his career.
This sucks... was really looking forward to seeing him play. At least he's young and still has time on his side...
I hope for a speedy recovery, yet somehow feel like I've been there as a fan. And typically, it looks as though Oden has a great shot at being injury prone through out his career.
Exactly.
I love Greg Oden and will miss seeing him play this year and pray he makes a full recovery, but I must admit its nice to know that tlong will be but an echo of a ghost's voice in here for a long time to come. Surely his hollow takes will be of a limited volume now.
I feel bad for oden though
I would have picked durant and I do not like texas ncaa teams. portland got lucky to even get the pick
they still could in my book fight for the last spots in the playoffs
they are talented without him
oden get well!
Damaged goods?
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
September 13, 2007
Just this week on the telephone, there was an Eastern Conference executive studying Greg Oden’s pre-draft physical in his office. Even now, this report still didn’t look like the body of a 19-year old prospect, but that of an older, worn veteran.
“From our (trainers and doctors), there were red flags everywhere,” he said.
The executive started listing the troubled spots – the bulging disc in the back, wrists, the ankles, the hands, a right leg that was an inch longer than the left, and yes, the knees. He wasn’t alone. Several pulled files this week with news of impending knee surgery, and kept wondering if maybe the breakdown of his body was just a matter of time.
Despite it all, this executive believed the Blazers had done the right thing drafting the 7-footer over Kevin Durant. Then again, he never had a practical need for his medical staff to pour over Oden like Portland did. No one else but Seattle did.
“It wouldn’t have stopped us from drafting him but it would’ve probably made us pause about making a deal to move up and get him,” the Eastern Conference executive said.
An unscientific poll of executives, talking prior to Yahoo! Sports' revelation on Thursday that the No. 1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft isn’t playing basketball this season for the Blazers, agreed with him. As it turned out, the right knee that had a red dot on the Orlando draft camp physicals turned into microfracture surgery for Oden.
Suddenly, he’s no longer the promise of the next Bill Russell.
Suddenly, he’s the fear of Sam Bowie.
Until there’s proof that his body isn’t breaking down, there’s a natural and legitimate worry that the Blazers could’ve passed on a Jordan-esque talent – Kevin Durant – to take a center who will turn out to be more defective than dominant.
Who wants to believe this will be the case? Who would want it to happen? The NBA needs Oden to be a superstar. He’s too talented of a player, too wonderful and grounded of a person, to consider the possibility that he could be a washout.
Several NBA executives conceded that the revelation that an MRI showed a need for exploratory surgery on Thursday didn’t completely surprise them. Some medical staffs who studied Oden’s pre-draft physicals expressed differing levels of concern, on different parts of his body.
“Our trainers did say they thought he had somewhat of an issue (with the right knee), but they weren't sure to what extent,” one Western Conference executive said. “I guess we're starting to see now that it’s more serious than some people thought.”
As one high-ranking basketball official with access to several trainers at the Orlando pre-draft camps remembered being told, “There were some things about (Oden’s knee) that were interesting and that if they had a chance (to draft) him, they would have to look a lot closer.”
All in all, one Eastern Conference personnel man said, “It was not a good physical.”
Nobody studied Oden closer than the Blazers and Sonics, and sources say that both teams would’ve still drafted him with the No. 1 pick. Only Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard knows how much of a risk he believed drafting Oden would be for his franchise. Oden had missed part of his freshman season at Ohio State with wrist surgery, and several teams wondered whether he had regained the complete range of motion in that shooting wrist.
Still, they believed it would return with time, but cartilage damage that causes microfracture surgery? Amare Stoudemire and Jason Kidd made it back the same, but Allan Houston and Penny Hardaway never did. For Oden, you have to wonder: Is this the end of his body breaking down, or just the beginning of it?
For now, Oden, a charismatic and lovable kid, will spend a long, rainy winter in Portland rehabilitating that right knee. Under Pritchard, everything had gone right for the Blazers in the past two seasons – the draft day deals for Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, the winning of the Draft Lottery, the unloading of headcases with bad contracts. All of that contributed to exorcising that lingering Jail Blazers image.
Now, everyone will be thinking about 1984 again, when with the second pick in the draft, the Blazers chose Kentucky’s Sam Bowie over North Carolina’s Michael Jordan. Bowie had a history of leg problems in college, and those never left him in a journeymen’s pro career. No one wants to believe that this is how it will go, how it will all turn out.
Durant thrilled Sonics officials with his scrimmage and practice performances against the Olympic team this summer in Las Vegas. They truly believe they’ve found a generational superstar with him.
Of course, that doesn’t make anyone feel better in Portland, where the most promising future in the sport suddenly looks too much like the darkest days of its past.
One day Russell, the next Bowie.
Nobody else in the NBA dares say, “I told you so,” but deep down they sure did fear it.
Adrian Wojnarowski is the national NBA columnist for Yahoo! Sports. Send Adrian a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_yl...yhoo&type=lgns
The Arvydas Sabonis curse.
Sabas was cursed long before he got to Portland.
Guess Durant's bench press doesn't seem so important now after all?
As for Oden, I don't think this can be attributed to anything except a bad combination of breaks (no pun). He's got a few physical issues that predispose him to musculoskeletal problems. (Having one leg longer than the other, for example, can lead to knee tendinitis and arthritis, although usually not at age 19 I think). Add to that the fact that he's 7 feet and a world-class basketball player who's been pushing his body almost nonstop for the last 5-10 years. At his size, with what he does, any structual imbalances can magnify small injuries into larger ones.
You don't need to come up with some additional hormonal problem to explain what's going on.
Well, you might be able to say the same about Oden.
Anyway, it's in keeping with the history of Portland centers.
Bill Simmons take on it
Blazers don't deserve Bowie 2.0
Sep. 13, 2007
Warning: Do not read this if you're a Portland Trail Blazers fan.
The three-word e-mail came this morning from someone who knows things: "Oden -- microfracture surgery."
My three-word response: "Oh. My. God."
It's one of the saddest stories in recent NBA history, regardless of how it turns out down the road: Not just that Portland took the wrong guy last June, but that the same city may have been screwed over twice. There was Bowie-over-MJ, and now, there might be Oden-over-Durant.
The Blazers' fans don't deserve this. They don't deserve the "Bowie 2.0" jokes, and they don't deserve to endure a season of Kevin Durant knife-in-the-stomach highlights when he's averaging 25 points a game on a bad Seattle team. On a larger scale, the double whammy of Bowie/Oden brings back memories of the day Reggie Lewis dropped dead seven summers after Lenny Bias' coke overdose. Obviously it's not as tragic because nobody died, but there was that same "Oh God, not again ..." feeling upon hearing the news. I know that feeling all too well. As a sports fan, there's nothing worse.
It's not like this story came out of the blue. Heading into the draft, there were concerns about Oden's long-term physical health and the fact his legs were different sizes. After his predraft physical with Portland, rumors spread that the Blazers were concerned about his knees, followed by a round of stories that they weren't concerned at all. I believed at the time the Oden-Durant thing was so close, ANY potential physical concerns should have swung the choice to Durant; that's one of the reasons I kept writing last June that Durant should be Portland's pick. Everyone kept writing Oden was a sure thing; if anything, Durant was the sure thing. He has a chance to become one of the greatest offensive players ever. That's his ceiling. We've never seen anyone remotely like him. Throw in his compe iveness and flair for the dramatic and I probably wrote more words arguing Durant's case than anything I've ever written for ESPN.com. Even for the team Portland had, Durant was the logical pick -- the Blazers could have kept Zach Randolph and played Durant at small forward instead of stupidly giving Randolph away.
There should've been no debate in June: Kevin Durant was the sure thing in the 2007 draft.
From Portland's viewpoint, what worried me was Oden wasn't entirely a basketball decision. Clearly, his gregarious personality played a huge role -- the Blazers even said so -- and when he hammed it up at a local parade after the draft, you could see why they picked him. After the whole Jail Blazers debacle, they spent the next few years trying to upgrade the character of their team. Hence, the curious Martell Webster pick (sixth in the '05 draft???), the Brandon Roy/LaMarcus Aldridge picks (and the team shying away from Ty Thomas); the Randolph trade; Steve Francis' buyout and everything else. It's not like Durant is a bad guy -- he's actually a good guy, just shy and uncomfortable with the press -- but Oden's deadpan wit and constant smile off the court made him a more seductive pick for a franchise that was desperately trying to win back the citizens of Portland. Supposedly, they were also attracted to Oden because he's a loyal person who didn't care where he played, whereas Durant's motives were tougher to peg. In four years, if Durant evolved into a superstar and had the words of the wrong agent in his ear, would he bail on Portland to play for a big market? Could they take that chance?
Here's the irony of the whole thing: You know who would have won the good people of Portland back and gotten them excited about basketball again? A kick-ass superstar like Kevin Durant. That's why the Blazers should have taken the most talented player. And everything that happened after the draft helped Durant's case: Oden looked terrible in the summer league and dropped out of the Olympic tryouts because of exhaustion (a dubious reason for someone who's 19; we should have known right there). Meanwhile, Durant got better and better in summer league and knocked everyone's socks off during the Olympic tryouts, including a jaw-dropping performance in the Blue-White scrimmage on TV. Even before the story broke about Oden's surgery, I was 100 percent convinced Portland would regret passing on Durant. We'll see 20 more Odens before we see another Durant.
You could say "Those who ignore the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them," and you might be right. But throwing aside all the videotapes, predraft interviews and workouts and everything else, there's this: At the ESPYS two months ago, I helped write jokes for Jimmy Kimmel, whose dressing room was backstage at the Kodak Theater and right off a hallway where celebrities were ushered in and out before and after the show. So, I watched every single athlete walk by at some point, and I swear, if I hadn't taken this summer off to write a book, I would have written about this story in a blog or something.
Anyway, when you see basketball players dressed in normal clothes, it's mesmerizing to watch them walk for two reasons: They're always much bigger in person, but they move so effortlessly that it's always strangely discombobulating to watch them walk, like they belong to another species or something. For instance, we all know one or two exceptionally tall people who don't play sports -- they always move gingerly, and their posture usually isn't that good, and everything about them says, "I wish I wasn't this tall." The best athletes in the NBA don't carry themselves like this. They glide. Everything moves effortlessly as they walk, and it's impossible to fully explain unless you've seen it. Even someone like Shaq glides across the room like he's the size of Steve Nash. They don't move like normal tall people.
So, before and after the show, I was vigilantly watching everyone stroll by for one reason: I wanted to see Oden and Durant walking in normal clothes. It was like the final piece of the "Durant vs. Oden" puzzle for me. As it turned out, I got to see Durant first -- he shuffled down the hallway, all 81 inches of him, looking like he was put on Earth to play sports for a living. No big surprise there. Even the biggest nonsports fan on the planet could watch Durant walk for 35 feet and think, "That guy was born to play basketball." Now, I needed Oden. We didn't see him before the show, and I didn't see him right afterward. Just when I was about to give up, a friend of mine said, "Yo, Oden just walked by."
I scurried down the hallway to see him. Lo and behold, Oden was walking by himself down the last stretch of the hallway, about 50 feet in all, right before the exit to head outside.
And you know what? He walked like a 50-year-old man. His posture was screwed up. He had the Fred Sanford walk going. If you saw him from behind and just studied his walk, you would have thought it was a retired player, someone like Patrick Ewing or Robert Parish. I couldn't believe it. I didn't stop talking about it the rest of the night. Greg Oden walked like a guy who had bad knees. If I were Portland's GM and watched Oden walk across the room, that would have been it for me. The next day, I even called my buddy Sully (who works for the Celtics) just to have the obligatory, "Yo, we might have dodged a bullet May 22; Greg Oden walks like a 50-year-old man" conversation.
Now, you could argue this is the single dumbest thing I've ever written, and you might even be right. Just know I have spent the past two months telling that Oden/ESPYS story to everyone who brought up the Oden-Durant thing to me. Sometimes in life, you just know with these things. And yeah, there's a chance he was already favoring his knee at the ESPYS, or he hurt his knee during summer league. There's also a chance his body doesn't carry its weight correctly and puts unnecessary stress on his legs and joints. ... You know, the exact same problem Sam Bowie had.
I hope I'm wrong. Portland needs Greg Oden to be good. The NBA needs Greg Oden to be good. On a personal note, I was legitimately excited to watch him play. Now he's gone for the season, and any NBA fan who doesn't cringe at the phrase "microfracture surgery" is lying their ass off. Amare Stoudemire came back, so there's hope for Blazers fans. Just don't tell me Greg Oden was the safe pick of the 2007 NBA draft. Two months ago, I wrote Durant was "the surest thing to come into the league since Jordan. Barring injury, he's going to be the league's next dominant forward."
That's what the Portland Trail Blazers passed up June 28, 2007. I thought it would haunt them some day. ... I just didn't know it would haunt them so soon.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...x?name=simmons
I feel bad for him. I was looking forward to Yao's ownage of him
there were concerns regarding his health weeks before the draft, this might be one of IT. Wow, first the wrist, then this one.
It's like Beckham's fateyou don't really know when he can play.
Sucks, I was actually looking forward to see Oden play alongside Duncan in the 2008 All-Star games. With Garnett is in the East now, there's a big chance Duncan will take the lead in the votes for PF position in the WC again.
And the ring ceremony game now will no longer be a must see game IMO.
It's a must see for the rings.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...x.html?cnn=yes
You may recall that 10 days before the draft last June we broke the news that some teams were concerned about Oden's physical status. One team in particular was worried about a number of problems.
"Our doctors saw some early signs of arthritis in his knees,'' an executive with that franchise recalled Thursday after news of Oden's microfracture had come out. "They were also really concerned with his hip and his back as well. The way they explained it, all of those problems are linked: The knee hurts because the back is doing this, and the back hurts because the hip is doing that. The doctors thought there was some inter-connectivity between each issue, so that basically his body was working against itself.''
What makes all of this complicated -- as anyone with a serious medical issue will attest -- is that different doctors will have different opinions. Provide the 30 NBA franchises with the same MRIs and medical results, and their team doctors will arrive at a variety of diagnoses and predictions.
Based on what Duffy had been told, Oden entered the draft with no pre-existing knee concerns. "Portland did more due diligence than anybody and their doctors saw nothing wrong with his knee,'' Duffy said.
if I am a blazer I find my own doctors
boston looks like they faired well for the draft now
true dat
in the draft not for the draft you got damn special ed short bus riding non ged passin dollar store buyin ADD dip .
You know i've been here for about a year now, and of your 15k+ posts I don't think one of them has been any type of quality post whatsoever.
head-scratcher ???
can you elaborate a little bit please?And be precise? I came from a country where English is not the main language and don't really get what you're really trying to say.
Boston is actually the winner compared to the Blazers this yr...
time can only tell how long Oden's knees can survive if he became a Celtic, who knows, 2-3 mos?
Pierce + Allen and KG
i like what simmons had to say about durant. i agree.
head-scratcher ???
can you elaborate a little bit please?And be precise? I came from a country where English is not the main language and don't really get what you're really trying to say.
Sequ is losing to ducks in a clarity battle.
I guess the ROY aword will be between Durant and Scola now.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
This means the Fakers should now challenge for the 8th spot in the WC playoff picture.
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