With the first pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, the Portland Trail Blazers selected Greg Oden. With the second pick, the Seattle SuperSonics selected Kevin Durant. If Portland could go back in time, 10 times out of 10 they’d switch their pick to Durant.
Earlier this week, Oden acknowledged this fact when he stated he was the biggest bust in NBA draft history.
“I’ll be remembered as the biggest bust in NBA history,” Oden told Outside the Lines. “But I can’t do nothing about that.”
As our very own Kevin McGuire pointed out, that may be true:
Oden was drafted with the top overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft after one season at Ohio State. The Portland TrailBlazers selected the big man but had to wait for him to even make his NBA debut. Microfracture surgery on his right knee put Oden on the shelf for his entire first season. He left his NBA debut the following season early with a foot injury and later injured his left knee in a game. The following season saw Oden once again go under the knife early in the season, this time on his left knee after being taken off the court on a stretcher. Injuries plagued Oden in the NBA and made it difficult for him to ever live up to the hype that came with being the top overall pick.
But anyway, back to this new story that came out. Days after Oden called himself a bust, the man picked right after him, Kevin Durant, defended Odon by saying the statement was “nonsense.”
“Nonsense. That’s nonsense,” Durant told ESPN. “In order for you to be a bust, you have to actually play and show people that you progressed as a player. He didn’t get a chance to.”
That is a good point. JaMarcus Russell was given opportunities to play and failed and then later on, those opportunities were taken away when he ran into trouble with the law.
Oden on the other hand didn’t have as many opportunities not because of arrests or ineffectiveness, but because of injuries.
The big man missed his rookie season after he underwent microfracture surgery on his knee. Later on in his career, Oden dealt with multiple knee surgeries that forced him to sit out the majority of the time he was in Portland.
“He didn’t want to get hurt. That was the last thing he wanted to do was to get hurt,” Durant added. “That wasn’t even in the cards, and he got injured and that was unfortunate. But when he did play, he was a force. Protecting the paint. They were so good with him and LaMarcus down low, with Brandon Roy [and] Andre Miller at the time. They had a nice team. So he was a big part of that. He’s not a bust. He just didn’t play a long time because of injuries, and that’s just what it is.”
When he was able to play, Oden was solid. During the 2008-2009 season, the seven-footer played in 61 games and started 39 of them. Oden averaged 8.9 points and 7 rebounds per game. A year later during the 2009-2010 season, Oden started all 21 games he played in and averaged a career high 11.1 points and 8.5 rebounds per game.
That tells us that maybe Kevin Durant is right. Oden wasn’t necessarily a bust because he never got consistent opportunities to prove how good he was.
To go back to the JaMarcus Russell comparison. Oden couldn’t do much about his bones and body breaking down while Russell could’ve potentially stopped himself from gaining weight, showing up late and eventually breaking the law. That’s why Oden isn’t a bust, as Durant says.
[ESPN]
